


no reason left to stay (that's why we're leaving)

by Iambic



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:10:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3582336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times the Iron Bull let Dorian Pavus walk away, and the one time he finally didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. left at sea

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a much shorter fic, a writing warm-up for the larger project I've been working on, but it seems to not be cooperating in that respect. Tags/rating will update as necessary.
> 
> Big thanks to [Bri](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AislinCade) for being an extremely helpful beta, and [Blythe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/blythesome) for providing the prompt.

The Iron Bull’s not the guy for big contemplation. Battle plans, keeping an eye out for anything and everything, finding advantages to press, that’s more his deal. But it’s pretty easy to see why the Storm Coast would be a prime spot for deep thoughts, for someone more given to ‘em. It’s in the air here -- literally, the fog, that gets stuck in the evergreens and the valleys between bluffs. Doesn’t do anything for the Bull, but he can see the effect it’s had on their expedition mage -- Dorian’s eyes have been unfocused, his thoughts clearly nowhere near the mission at hand, staring out toward the sea. He’s managed to keep following the Adaar, though, so the Bull’s fine with letting it slide.

He’s less fine when Dorian nearly pitches off a cliff, and he grabs their mage by the middle before he falls to his death or at least grievous injury. Dorian’s eyes focus abruptly, and when the Bull flings him back onto the cliff it’s with too much force; he stumbles and falls over against the sea grass.

“Will you leave off--” he snaps, and then cuts off, probably seeing the ledge he nearly walked off just seconds ago. His jaw snaps shut fast enough to click. No thanks are gonna come, the Bull knows, but he stays there anyway, just to make sure Dorian’s fit to keep going. Last thing they need is a disoriented or concussed mage -- both for the mage’s sake and for the rest of them.

The Adaar is already heading downhill on the proper path, but Cole senses the problem immediately and stops her with a careful hand. He speaks, too low for the Bull to understand, but it’s probably best he doesn’t hear the vint’s inner demons. Not fair to either of them, even though the Bull’s long figured out that Dorian presents absolutely no danger at all.

Rather, Dorian is a liability. Distracted by something that he has yet to make public knowledge, uncomfortable in every environment they’ve traversed, and unwilling to communicate any difficulty or pain he experiences. He’ll fall in battle before admitting to being wounded, regardless of his frequent demands for a potion to be thrown his way. He won’t carry anything curative on him either, only those noxious lyrium potions he always grimaces before draining.

He’s powerful in a fight, of course, but he spares not a moment for his own defense, can’t heal for shit, and will keep running into the middle of the battle to lay into the enemy with his staff when he runs out of juice. It may have a sharp edge, but he has no armor to speak of.

“Dorian!” shouts the Adaar, back in the present, as she runs back. She’s mostly unflappable, but has a weakness for her charges’ safety -- one the Bull can hardly criticise, considering his own fretting over his Chargers. ”Bull, is he--”

“I’m fine,” says Dorian, rising shakily to his feet; he looks quickly to the Bull and then just as quickly away. It’s the closest he’s come to thanks in the Bull’s experience, and the Bull wants to laugh. That probably wouldn’t go over well in present circumstances and company, though.

“Hidden in the hold, hoping, hiding, how late will I be? What will remain to salvage, secure, what will my father’s failure find in foreign fields--” Cole falls silent when the Adaar places a finger to his lips.

“Not now,” she says, gentle; the most gently she has spoken in the Bull’s brief acquaintance with her. “Dorian. Can you keep walking? It looks like we can set up camp below the cliffs here.”

“I was… prevented from injuring myself,” says Dorian, each word dragged from his lips with some kind of grudging willpower. “Making camp may not be a terrible idea, but I am prepared to continue without hindering our forces.”

The Bull snorts, and the Adaar glances his way. Dorian decidedly does not, looking up to a blank grey sky as if it has caught his attention. “Maybe, if you can see where you’re going,” drawls the Bull, and the Adaar raises her eyebrow in an elegant curve. No one would dare say it to her face, but she does cut rather a handsome figure in her sweeping mage’s coat and her copper-coated horns. If not for the unforgivable sin of being Vashoth get, she would surely by now have charmed the Orlesian court out of their money and their soldiers both.

Dorian only glares, for a moment at the Bull and then back toward the sky. “I will be fine,” he says, a different animal than his previous assessment but probably still untrue. Fine to fight, maybe. But it’s clear, and was even before Cole’s uneasy speech, that the vint was anything but in any other area.

They make their way down the hill mostly in silence, the Adaar looking back toward Dorian, worry in her face and tense shoulders, but whatever face he makes seems to at least encourage her to let him be. She’s got enough on her plate with the dead scouts and the Blades of Hessarian who killed them; if Dorian says he can keep up she’ll no doubt take him at his word, at least until camp.

Not so the Bull. He promised his services as bodyguard, and if that doesn’t mean actively protecting her, it means making sure the rest of her team is fit to fight. As the slope smooths out to a gentle hill, the Bull draws up to Dorian’s left side. “This gonna keep being a problem?”

To his credit, Dorian doesn’t jump, but he spares the Bull a withering look. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” he says, chin up in that way of his that looks haughty but might just be in preemptive self-defense.

“Sure. Right up until you walk off another cliff.” He fixes his eye on Dorian’s lips as they purse, as if holding back a retort. Here on the coast and in the on-and-off drizzling, Dorian’s gold-brown skin mutes and darkens, and his perfectly coiffed hair loses its shape and poise. It’s a good look on him. Take the shine off the peacock, and there’s something plain and sturdy underneath.

Dorian finally settles on a response, face shuttering closed. “What does it matter to you if I do? Just another dead ‘Vint, right?”

This isn’t the first time he’s used that disdainful tone on himself. Comes off casual, but there’s a bite to it, and Dorian doesn’t look at the Bull to deliver it. He’s staring off toward the hill on their left, at the shrubs and irregular patches of embrium -- but the Bull would bet money that Dorian wasn’t seeing any of that at all.

He waves a hand in front of Dorian’s face to bring his attention back, and Dorian glares again for his trouble. “Vint or not, you’re on the team. The Adaar trusts you to have her back. Can’t do that with your attention on your own thoughts, or dead beneath a cliff. We’re relying on you right now. So we have your back too, whether you like it or not.”

Dorian has a fairly good cards face, but he’s got a tell in the lines that show on the outer side of his eyes. Like he’s pressing them down against the instinct to widen them. With that momentum, the Bull continues: “I’m not gonna press you for details, but it’ll probably help to get the shit in your head out of your system if you talk about it to someone.”

“Talk to someone? Who? Cole, who can just see it anyway? The Herald, who has quite enough on her plate already without my problems as well?” Dorian snorts. “ _You_?”

The Bull shrugs. “Just a thought.”

A gust of wind blows in from the ocean, disturbing Dorian’s hair further. Dorian looks down, against the wind but maybe also against the Bull. He opens his mouth like he’s gonna say something after all -- but then the wind moves on, and Dorian shuts his mouth again. They’re getting closer to the natural rock bridge separating them from the beach. Lagging behind now; he can just see the Adaar and Cole stopped a little further on, considering an almost flat space in the shelter of a small hill and a taller rock formation. Good a place to set up camp as any.

Dorian exhales through his nose, irritated. “I don’t need anyone getting in my head,” he snaps. “One spirit boy is bad enough. I’ll pull my weight, you don’t have to worry about me.”

It’s not exactly worrying about Dorian; not much, anyway. But the Bull doesn’t need to say that, so he keeps it to himself. When Dorian picks up his stride, the Bull slows his down, to allow Dorian the satisfaction of walking away.


	2. left out of order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dorian hits hard and the Bull knows his limits better than he does.

It figures, for no trip out with the Adaar ever involves safety, that they end up slapping down walking corpses like so many flies. They’re better armed-corpses than the dead Crestwood refugees, which makes sense considering they were all soldiers in life -- but they hit harder, more accurately than the Crestwood corpses, too. It could be lingering strength in the muscles that haven’t rotted yet. It’s probably demons.

The Bull sucks at his tongue and spits on the last bisected corpse at his feet. The Adaar -- a mage in her own right, even if she prefers to use her staff as a glorified glaive -- nudges another fallen body with one booted foot. With a scuffle of feet from above, Sera jumps down and immediately covers her mouth at the reek. “Cor, and I thought it was bad up there!” she says, moving her hand up to protect her nose as well. “Dorian! Do that no smell thing you do!”

Dorian’s taking a while to join them, picking his way through corpses and viscera and grimacing with every step. He’s got a smear of blood on one cheek, too fresh to come from a corpse, and he leans on his staff, too heavily for it to just be for balance. He pauses when Sera speaks to call back, “What, the barrier spell?”

Sera uncovers her mouth just long enough to yell back, “Whatever that shit is that keeps shit out!”

“Thought you didn’t like magic,” the Bull says to her, an aside that Dorian probably won’t hear. He’s got a couple scratches and bruises himself, but his own skin’s tough enough that he’s not bleeding too bad, even without the vitaar. He wipes a trickle of blood first from his gut and then off his hand and onto his pants. Vivienne would’ve chastised him, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, and the Adaar doesn’t give a shit. She and the Bull are covered in blood enough anyway, rust brown from the corpses.

Sera scowls back at him. “Don’t like smells worse. It’s bad enough when they’re alive before you kill ‘em.”

A couple moments of careful limping around corpse bodies, and Dorian finally reaches the rest of the party. “So very sorry to disappoint, but I’m fresh out of spells,” he says with a sigh. “Allow me a moment to recover, if you would be so obliging.”

The Adaar snorts, and tosses a potion his way. “Don’t bother,” she tells Dorian as he almost drops it. “You’re overdoing it again.”

A barrier drops over the whole party anyway, and the Bull’s about to give Dorian a piece of his mind about it until he catches the blue-green tint to it: the Adaar’s doing, not Dorian’s. Sera drops her hand again and whoops, and the Adaar snorts quietly, but the Bull doesn’t look over to catch the eye roll, still watching Dorian.

The Adaar’s got a point. Instead of taking higher ground on the wooden railways, Dorian followed the Bull and her down to the ground-level walkway. If the corpses had advanced from both sides as the Bull suspected, Dorian would have fought at close quarters again. Admirable in concept but a bad move in practice, but this never stopped Dorian before.

“We gotta get you some thicker armor, ‘Vint,” the Bull says. “Like the Adaar has.”

“It’ll only slow me down,” Dorian replies, irritated. “I know that with all the undead around it must be difficult to tell the difference, but I still have yet to die in what I’m wearing.”

The Bull shakes his head. “Rather you kept it that way.”

Dorian snorts, but drinks the potion anyway, grimacing at the taste. The Adaar apparently mixes them up herself these days, and the functionality can’t be questioned, but she doesn’t ever bother making them easier to swallow. Granted, she doesn’t seem that invested in flavour in general. Might not have much of a sense of taste. But lightning’ll do that.

The Adaar’s shading her eyes against the Exalted Plains’ smoky sunlight, looking to the western end of the ramparts. “There’s another body pit up there,” she says, slow like she’s thinking hard. “Don’t know if we’re in a state to take down another arcane horror right now.”

“We got those slow heal slimes,” Sera says, wrinkling her nose. “Plus the shiteblocker.”

“Barrier spell.” The Adaar smiles with her eyes, though, before looking to Dorian. “What about you?”

Looking back at Dorian, the Bull frowns. He’s got that stubborn set of his jaw again, even though when he pushes his hair back it reveals the angry cut near his temple. Potion aside, he should be heading back to camp, not running back into battle. The three of them could probably take one arcane horror on their own.

Predictably, Dorian lifts his chin. “Your concern is flattering, but I’ve got some fight left in me,” he says, pushing himself off his staff to stand up straight. He only winces a little, but it confirms the suspicion about his injured leg.

The Adaar gazes at him, face blank, but nods eventually. “I’ll take you on your word,” she says, and then heads back toward the ladder up to the upper walkway. Dorian makes to follow, but the Bull steps into his way, crossing his arms.

Dorian raises his eyebrows. “Adaar is expecting backup. Any reason you’re delaying me?”

“You’re injured,” says the Bull. “You can’t walk without your staff, you’re low on magic, and you’re bleeding. You should sit this one out.”

“I see right through you,” Dorian replies, with a laugh that cuts off abruptly as he winces again. The Bull adds a cracked rib to the list. “You’d like the lion’s share of the fight. Don’t bother denying it, Bull, you’re incredibly obvious.”

“I mean it.” The Bull fixes his one eye on Dorian’s two, even after Dorian glances quickly away. That cut on his face still bleeds, sluggishly, and there’s blood dried in his eyebrow. The skin around the eye has already started to swell and tinge a darker red; the beginnings of a spectacular black eye.

It’s been like this lately. Ever since the meeting with his father, Dorian hits harder, throws himself into battle with less care, takes less stock of his surroundings. Doesn’t save any magic to cast a damn barrier.

“If I didn’t know better,” says Dorian, “I’d say you had a soft spot for the Tevinter mage. To match your stomach.”

The Bull would laugh any other time, but that’s a deflection, and Dorian did it on purpose. “You’re no good to anyone dead.”

There’s a flicker in Dorian’s face, too quick to catch before he settles back in that stubborn set. “Neither are the rest of you,” he snaps, and steps around the Bull with a wide berth like he’s expecting the Bull to restrain him. But the Adaar trusts Dorian to know his limits, and even if the Bull’s got his doubts, he won’t undermine the boss.

The Adaar and Sera are already dispatching another round of walking corpses when Dorian and the Bull rejoin them. At least they’re all coming from a single direction for now, so the Bull can position himself in front of the rest of the party, across the bridge. Not that this stops the Adaar from darting in to pick off the archers in the corpse mob, but at least she’s wearing that heavy armor these days. When the barriers flicker into being around the two of them, they’re Dorian’s telltale shade of purple, but the Bull can’t spare a glance back to make sure he and Sera are clear of the fighting.

He can at least hold the bridge from this side and hope that the corpses are all attacking from one side. By now he’s got the hang of their weaknesses -- the arms may effectively swing a sword, but they’re brittle and break off easy. An unarmed corpse can’t do much, even if it’s still walking, so he can just leave ‘em be to wait for the Adaar’s next lightning strike.

The Bull cleaves through another cluster of dead bodies and raises his greataxe again only to stagger back as a blast of magic slams him. “Arcane horror!” Dorian calls with a cracking voice, as the Bull steadies himself and makes a quick decision. He can’t hold the bridge and take down a foe this powerful at once, so he’s got to trust that their ranged fighters can keep them off before the arcane horror can push him back again, giving him time to reach it.

This time it’s a single bolt of lightning that zaps past him, focused on the new threat, and the electricity interrupts the arcane horror’s next spell to give the Bull time to close on it. He gets in one swing, then another, before its shields go up.

They go down just as quickly, and that’s not one of the Adaar’s tricks. Well, shit. The Bull rushes the arcane horror -- got to get its attention back -- but it winks out of existence, and the Bull crashes into the barrier around the corpse pit instead.

It takes too long to right himself and turn around and the Adaar’s cut off by corpses, and he can only watch while an ice bolt knocks Sera down and that sick green light of the arcane horror’s draining curse catches Dorian dead center. Another lightning bolt hits the thing, but not hard enough to cut off the spell, and Dorian’s nose bleeds freely by the time the Bull makes it back to the bridge.

Times like these he misses Cassandra, who could bash this thing off the upper walkway with that shield of hers. His axe cuts through the horror but that constant low-level shield slows him too much to hit hard enough. “Your barrier, get your barrier up!” he shouts, over the buzz and crackle of the curse, but Dorian raises his face and it’s clear there’s no way he has the power for it. “Boss!” he yells, turning his head just quickly enough to see her running over, and in that moment of distraction the arcane horror slams him back again.

It ends the draining curse, but too late; Dorian’s legs give out as the Bull gets up and into a spinning attack, momentum gaining him speed enough to drive through the horror’s shield and stagger it, before it can interrupt him. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the Adaar’s barrier go up around Sera and Dorian, and a cloud of explosives signals Sera’s return to the battle. It clouds the Bull’s vision, but he doesn’t need to see to know he’s hitting his target.

Another flash of light, at his back this time, means the Adaar’s still taking on corpses, but that’s not the priority here. The Bull has to slow his spinning blows, dizzy and breathing too hard. Without bothering to waste precious seconds raising his greataxe he lunges forward to bash with his forehead, whips his head around to gore the arcane horror on one horn, while one of Sera’s arrows gets it in the skull, knocking it forward, toward him.

A head wound won’t kill it, but it’ll do damage. At these close quarters, though, the Bull can’t hit it, and as he backs up the drain curse catches him. He shudders as the strength wanes in his muscles, pulls at his bones -- and then Dorian’s barrier closes around him and his head clears. With the last bit of his strength, the Bull raises his axe above his head and brings it down as hard as he can.

It’s enough this time. The skull splits, the Bull’s axe buries itself halfway through the thing’s chest, and the arcane horror wavers and then collapses in on itself. After the clash of battle, the air weighs heavy and silent around them.

He has to lean on his greataxe for a moment to catch his breath, before he can run slowly back to Dorian. Sera’s already there, nudging their mage in the face with a potion while the mage in question slumps over his knees and the legs attached that lie at worrying angles beneath him. His face went ashen somewhere during the fight, and the hand he tries to raise to take the bottle shakes and falls back to his lap.

He looks up at the Bull upon his approach. “If you’re here to say you told me so,” says Dorian, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I’m carrying you back to camp,” the Bull replies, as Sera finally gives up and tips her potion down Dorian’s throat.

Dorian winces. “I suppose there’s no way around that.”

“Damn straight there isn’t.”

Before the Adaar reaches them, Dorian’s eyes flutter closed, and he finishes collapsing forward. Their fearless leader squats to feel his throat, hissing at the head wound. “Bull,” she says, and the Bull nods, gathering Dorian carefully into his arms. It’s probably for the best Dorian’s not conscious for this part; moving around would probably make things worse.

“I can heal him better at camp,” the Adaar tells the remaining party, the Bull with his bundle of mage and Sera with her irritated glare that doesn’t really hide how scared she is. “Just try to walk smoothly.”

The Bull looks down at Dorian’s face: soot-stained, covered with blood on one side and from his nostrils down over his lips. Dorian won’t hear him now, so he says, quietly, “I told you so.”


	3. left in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dorian opens up -- but not quite enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that brought up the rating, so if you're like I used to be and don't want to read several thousand words of explicit gettin' down, you're safe to skip this one. Everyone else: enjoy! Also: I'm sort of sorry about all the puns. Well. Not really.
> 
> ALSO ALSO: the delightful Alphabetiful drew this _gorgeous_ illustration of beat-up Dorian from last chapter. [Check this out!](http://alphabetiful.tumblr.com/post/114432058009/quick-quick-sketch-of-poor-beat-up-dorian-from)

The first time they were both drunk. The second time was in the middle of the day, when the Bull tested out how handsy he could get -- very, provided no one else sees. The third time is the clincher.

Dorian shows up somewhat late at night, knocking on the door quietly like he’s worried the Bull is asleep, or unsure of what he’s about to do. But the Bull was in the middle of stretching, nothing that couldn’t wait, and when he opens the door with a smile Dorian, wonder of wonders, isn’t even scowling a little.

“The problem with celibacy,” Dorian says as the Bull waves him in, “is that it’s only bearable as long as you maintain it.”

The Bull closes the door and grins, leaning back against the stone wall beside it. “Got a taste, and now you wanna come back for more?” When Dorian doesn’t immediately object, he adds, “Don’t worry. You’re not the first to say that.”

A put-upon sigh, and Dorian’s hands go up to bracket his head. “Really! I reach out in a moment of weakness, and this is what I get?”

There’s no need to rile him up completely just yet -- there’s time for that before the night is out. The Bull stands back up again and crosses the room, slowly, both for the effect and also so Dorian can see him coming. He drops his hands to Dorian’s hips, and Dorian’s hands come down to rest against the Bull’s chest. Not a push, just a point of contact. The smile on Dorian’s face wavers with a quick breath in, and his eyes slide shut when the Bull slides his hands around to Dorian’s back, lowering his head so Dorian can raise his face to kiss.

It’s not a tender thing, hasn’t been since the first night. Dorian’s mouth opens like he doesn’t even think about it, and the Bull’s mouth is that much bigger that he just engulfs Dorian’s. By the way that Dorian presses up against him and curls his hands halfway toward fists, though, he must appreciate the effect.

In the end it’s a simple thing that makes Dorian fall into him, just a hand tangling in the back of his hair, and the Bull sits down on the bed and pulls Dorian down with him, into his lap. The noise Dorian makes could be indignation, could be enthusiasm, mostly likely a bit of both, but he reaches up for the Bull’s horns anyway and returns to the kiss.

Now the Bull’s hands wander, smoothing down Dorian’s back over all the leather and straps, pushing into the gap between jacket and pants to feel the warm skin underneath, drawing out a soft moan from Dorian’s mouth to his own. He breaks the kiss to mouth at the exposed skin of Dorian’s throat, which Dorian obligingly bares. No marks for now, but he frees his hands to work at the buckles of Dorian’s jacket, unfastening the half-cloak clinging to Dorian’s shoulders, winning a shiver and another small noise.

“Want to try riding me again?” the Bull asks, and is rewarded by a sharp intake of breath. “I take it that’s a yes.”

Dorian raises his head again, face flushed red and pupils blown -- it’s so good, how quickly he comes apart under the Bull’s hands -- and falters for a split second. “You’ll… have to spend more time opening me up,” he says, voice breathy and low.

The Bull grins. “Can do.”

Another few straps unbuckled, and the hollow of Dorian’s throat down to his solar plexus are freed from the leather; the Bull pauses to kiss the skin there. The kiss turns to a sucking bite, because they found out last time that Dorian really likes being marked, and the Bull really likes seeing him marked when he’s splayed out and boneless afterwards. Dorian draws another sharp breath in, and his hands stray to the base of the Bull’s horns, massaging the skin around them in that way that sends tingles down his skull every time.

The rest of the jacket is short work from there, and Dorian takes his hands back for a second to shrug it off. Before he can return them, the Bull grabs him by the wrists, pulling him in to reclaim his mouth. Dorian sighs into it, and when the Bull puts Dorian’s hands on his shoulders they stay there.

“You don’t have anywhere to be tonight, yeah?” he asks, breaking the kiss only for a moment, only for Dorian to be able to shake his head, dazed. “Good,” says the Bull into his mouth, and runs hands down Dorian’s thighs before gripping them, tight enough to get another moan. Dorian kisses the harder for it. His fingers keep digging further into the Bull’s shoulders, and if he keeps this up he might even be able to leave a bruise or two. It’s kind of a feat of strength, but Dorian has kept up his constitution, has only gotten stronger over the course of the Inquisition. He’s not a small man by any measurement.

Now the Bull lets go of Dorian’s legs, rests his hands at the waist of Dorian’s leather leggings for just a little bit before working at the buttons. They’re not easy to get at. This fashion business is pretty easy on the eyes, but inconvenient as fuck to remove. The Bull manages, and Dorian rises up on his knees, hands shifting to the base of the Bull’s neck, so the leather can be rucked down, along with the silk underneath. The Bull can’t completely keep himself from laughing when, finally uncovered, Dorian’s dick bounces free.

Dorian huffs into his mouth, and the Bull smiles against Dorian’s lips as fondness crashes through him, even stronger than the arousal. The leggings won’t go all the way down until Dorian stops straddling him, but Dorian doesn’t seem too bothered about it. The Bull puts his hands back at Dorian’s hips, where they started, and dips his fingers a little lower to gauge Dorian’s reaction. He gets a louder groan, and Dorian arches his back to press against the Bull’s hands, so down they go to get a good handful of Dorian’s ass.

“Gonna let me eat you out this time?” He has to pull back from the kiss to make sure Dorian hears him, and also to catch the look on his face. Startled, but no curl of the upper lip or frown, so that’s probably gonna get the go-ahead -- maybe not tonight, but eventually for sure. The Bull trails fingers toward the dip between his cheeks, and Dorian shivers again, presses back a little harder, like maybe he didn’t even mean to.

Dorian’s face drops to the Bull’s shoulder, so the Bull feels rather than sees his lips curve into a smile. “I had a feeling you might ask again,” he says, sort of muffled. “I washed more carefully this time.”

If he hadn’t already been flushed, the Bull wouldn’t be surprised to see him start. That’s more forward than Dorian’s been before, taking initiative like that, and it warms the Bull more than he would have expected. “Well,” he replies, “aren’t you a good boy?”

It isn’t a particularly well-thought-out response, but the reaction it gets is absolute gold. Dorian jolts in place, raises his face again so the Bull can see his shaken expression, as if he can’t also feel Dorian’s dick twitch against his gut. “Oh, you’re into that,” he says, and it’s not a question, which is good because Dorian sure isn’t in a condition to respond. He just makes a strangled, keening noise, and falls forward to press closer against the Bull’s chest.

The Bull laughs again, deep in his chest, and traces one blunt-nailed finger across the sensitive skin over Dorian’s tailbone, and that gets another sound -- Dorian is outright panting now, and that’s a sound that goes straight to the Bull’s dick. But it’s also a kind of sobering realisation, how easy it is to take Dorian apart, the needy and desperate man behind the act. First time they’d been drunk. Second time they’d been in a hurry. Now, though…

“You’re doing good,” the Bull says, and “I’ve got you,” and Dorian unmistakably whimpers. It’s this realisation that he’s holding something vulnerable, that he’s been given the go-ahead to see, and it hits him in the chest and lungs like it hits him in the dick, and suddenly the Bull can see how far gone he is, how invested he’s somehow become.

He leaves off Dorian’s ass to position them both completely on the bed, and then finishes pulling off Dorian’s leggings. Dorian gets enough of a hold on himself to jut out his chin, says, “I hope you’re going to be removing your own clothing now.” It’s kind of defiant but not at all detached. Another chuckle, and the Bull does as asked, shucking off his pants as Dorian sees to the buckle of his harness. That gets tossed onto the mattress beside them, and maybe they can get some unconventional use out of it later, but right now the Bull’s kind of distracted by a naked Dorian, looking up all undone and heavy-lidded.

“I seem to remember an offer.” Dorian’s smiling now, and that’s even more attractive. Funny, how the Bull had started out appreciating the view while keeping an eye on the resident ‘Vint, before it turned into a specific desire. Funnier, how he’s now more affected by Dorian’s smile than his nudity. It’s not something that happens with sex, usually, more like how he feels about his Chargers -- not the same, but related somehow.

He has to pause to stroke the side of Dorian’s face, some kind of impulse he doesn’t really get but wants to follow anyway. “Hey, don’t let anyone say the Iron Bull doesn’t keep his promises,” he says, and then lifts his hand to make a spinning motion: _turn over_.

Dorian exhales slow and loud before doing as told, and holds the position when the Bull pulls his hips to a comfortable height. The Bull starts where he left off, casual explorations with his fingers, dipping lower bit by bit while Dorian’s breath goes ragged and irregular. He kisses, lightly, one cheek then the other, and buries his teeth into the skin on the right side, making Dorian gasp and grab at the blanket. Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark. The thought of seeing Dorian walking around later and knowing about the bruise on his ass, where no one else can see, is way hotter than the Bull would have anticipated before this. He’s not usually a territorial guy, and this isn’t exactly territorial for that matter -- more like graffiti carved into a popular landmark: the Iron Bull was here.

He lets up to push Dorian’s ass out of the way to fit his face there, and takes an experimental lick toward the eventual goal. This gets a downright shudder and a choked-off noise, and the Bull’s dick pulses in response, a pleasant reminder of what they’re getting to eventually. But he loves this part, driving his bedmate to desperation with his tongue. Especially when this one went to all the trouble of cleaning himself ahead of time. Not that this has stopped the Bull in the past, but it’s definitely a nice addition.

He’s tracing circles now, and Dorian gasps for breath and moans, wanton and with a voice that cracks. Bull dips his tongue down to Dorian’s perineum and back up again, and Dorian spasms.

Coming up for breath, the Bull grins, though Dorian won’t see it. “New experience for you?”

It takes a couple minutes for Dorian to respond. “I hadn’t considered it from… this angle,” he says, and the Bull snorts.

“Want me to keep going?” The Bull punctuates with a long lick back up to the small of Dorian’s back. “Or was there something else you had in mind?”

Dorian presses his face against the bed. “I honestly don’t know,” he says, still breathless but wry nonetheless. “I had some ideas, but…”

“What if I said we could do this again?” suggests the Bull, and that gets another shiver. “I’ll even keep offering it. Better than letting you dance around asking.”

After a moment Dorian raises his head from the mattress. “Keep going just a smidgen longer,” he says.

Another grin that Dorian can’t see, and the Bull says again, “Can do.”

He returns his tongue to its task, swiping back down to that sensitive skin while Dorian swears and gasps. His hands fist in the blankets, and both his arms and legs have begun shaking with the strain of holding his position. The Bull lets go one cheek to support Dorian’s abdomen, and presses more firmly into the space he’s made for another few swirls of his tongue.

“I’m going to need you to wash your mouth after this,” Dorian sighs, still managing to sound impatient around his heavy breath. “I hope you anticipated this before committing yourself.” The Bull only replies by pressing his tongue ever so slightly into Dorian, who twitches violently as his arms finally give out. Enough of that for now -- next time they’ll find some pillows beforehand. He squeezes Dorian’s ass a few times while Dorian catches his breath, and then lowers him down onto the bed.

“I’m gonna get up now,” he says, and Dorian nods. The Bull rises slowly from the bed, the act of breaking contact between them surprisingly difficult. But Dorian gave him a limit and that’s the kind of behaviour he wants to reward here. Fortunately there’s a basin in the room, one of its perks that make up for the the hole in the ceiling, and he even brought up fresh water earlier in the evening. Here in the south they haven’t exactly figured out dental hygiene, but he can make do with a cloth -- one he knows is clean, because Dorian’s fussy enough to notice -- and some soap. Tastes foul as anything, but it rinses out quick. “All clear,” says the Bull, spitting out the door once more before closing it.

On the bed, Dorian has curled in on himself, and it’s only worry until the Bull gets close enough to see the goosebumps on his skin. Of course Dorian’s cold. He glares at the Bull. “Come back here then. You’re the only warm thing for miles.”

“I knew it. You only wanted me for my body temperature,” the Bull teases, but he climbs back over Dorian again, resting a decent amount of his weight on the scowling mage, resting his chin on his hands to get a better look at Dorian’s face. “Good thing I’m happy to provide the service.”

There’s something unguarded there for only a moment, a flash of something that looks almost like sadness. Then it’s gone, sucked up into the irritation that acts as much like a mask as an earnest expression of displeasure. “I hope that’s not all you’re happy to provide,” Dorian says, and the Bull grins and bends down to kiss him, tucking that revealing moment away to think about later.

Dorian hasn’t lost the heat of arousal at least, and he surges up into the kiss, pulls himself up with the Bull’s horns. Any damage the cold did on his erection doesn’t last long, and the Bull gets a thrill out of feeling it press up underneath him. He pulls himself forward, which ends a lot of the skin-to-skin contact, but the wordless noise of protest Dorian makes cuts off when the Bull’s dick rubs up against his own.

The face Dorian makes when he’s reminded just how big the Bull is in that respect as well hasn’t stopped being hot as hell, so the Bull pulls back to get a good look. Dorian, with red, swollen lips and flushed skin, opens his mouth and drops his eyelids near shut. Sometime the Bull’s gonna ask him to keep his eyes open. Not tonight, though.

“You mentioned something about--” and here Dorian wrinkles his nose, killing the effect-- “riding you.”

“So I did,” says the Bull, with a hum instead of a laugh. “Guess that means I gotta let you up.”

“Don’t you dare,” Dorian snaps. “Rushing it was the problem last time, you may recall.”

The Bull curls up one edge of his mouth, a lazy smile, and gathers Dorian’s wrists together in one hand, the hand missing two fingers, moving his weight to rest on his knees.That’s gotten a response from him before, and it works just as well this time, another full-body twitch that the Bull soothes with his free hand before dragging it down between Dorian’s legs. He just barely grazes Dorian’s dick on his way down, and that gets the loudest moan yet. He’s pressing his finger against the hole before he remembers the oil, thankfully sitting on the table by the bed, almost in arm’s reach.

“Dorian,” he says, removing his hand, and there’s murder in Dorian’s eyes now. “I’m gonna let go of your hands. I want you to get that jar on the table, you’re closer than I am.”

Dorian glares a moment longer before the request registers, and then it’s downright funny the way he scrambles for it. “A very good boy,” the Bull praises, and Dorian’s breath hitches before lubricant goes anywhere.

Hands empty, Dorian brings them back over his head unprompted, and then it’s the Bull’s turn for a sharp inhale. A motion so trusting and accommodating --  something the Bull never would have expected of the Dorian he first knew, but isn’t surprised at all to see now. But the reality of Dorian’s submission, without being asked, is way more overwhelming than anyone could have expected.

The Bull has to pause to lean forward, grip Dorian’s wrists again and kiss him, hard and as desperate as Dorian had just a few minutes ago. “So good,” he says, and Dorian swallows it with another moan. The Bull brings his other hand back down, giving Dorian’s dick a proper stroke, while Dorian skips moaning altogether and cries out, jerking his hands uselessly in the Bull’s restraint.

He’s close, that’s obvious, but he can’t come yet, not before getting properly fucked like he was angling for. Like they didn’t manage last time in their hurry. The Bull makes sure not to make any accidental contact at all when, fingers coated, he pushes ever so slightly into Dorian. The pressure, slight as it is, still wins a helpless whine, and the Bull smiles with that unfamiliar affection and pushes farther in. It’s a tight fit, at least at first, but Dorian’s tense all over so it’s not really unexpected. Still -- “You remember what to say if it’s too much?” the Bull asks, and Dorian opens eyes that have slid shut but can’t speak, just nods dumbly again. “Tell me,” the Bull says.

“I say ‘katoh’ if,” Dorian starts, and his voice breaks. “If I want you to stop.”

“Good,” the Bull says absently, and then with intent this time, “You catch on so quick.” While Dorian’s still reacting, the Bull pushes his finger further in, feeling the muscles clench around him as Dorian’s whine turns high-pitched and ragged. “Relax, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“Please--” Dorian gasps, and the Bull doesn’t even bother biting back his vocal response. He moves his finger in clockwise circles, waits for the muscles around him to relax. With the presence of mind to have slicked every finger, he doesn’t have to pause when Dorian’s open enough, just slides in his middle finger alongside the index. Dorian cries out again, far past the point of keeping quiet. As close to shameless as the Bull has ever seen.

Two fingers are a tight fit at first, but Dorian loosens around them quicker this time. “You doing okay?” the Bull asks, and Dorian barely whispers a yes. “Can you take more?”

“Give me a moment.” Dorian’s speaking voice is hoarse and low, a world away from the frantic sounds he’s been making. He clenches tight for a moment before relaxing further, and if that’s a sign of things to come, finally fucking him might be even better than expected. The Bull starts turning his fingers in a wider circle, not enough for a third finger, just to keep Dorian desperate and loud.

With no prompting to increase capacity, the Bull slows his movements and presses just that much deeper, crooking his fingers to feel for the prostate, smiling wide at the high gasp Dorian makes when he finds it. “Gonna be able to last?” he asks, and when he looks up to Dorian’s face he meets Dorian’s narrowed eyes. “That a no?”

“Oh, please,” Dorian says between harsh breaths. “I can -- ah -- last at least as long as you.”

“So that’s a challenge. Good to know.” The Bull leans forward to kiss the trail of hair going down the lower half of Dorian’s stomach, biting at the last moment. “You ready to keep going?”

It takes Dorian a moment to respond. “Please,” he finally repeats, bravado turned needy, like he’s figured out exactly what that does to the Bull. To return the favour, the Bull growls low in his throat, and pulls his fingers back to add a third when he eases them in again. This time Dorian shouts, pulsing around him, but loosened and slick enough now that there’s no resistance.

Probably Dorian’s loose enough to ride him, but since they have the time, the Bull makes use of it, fucking in and out him with all three fingers. Dorian writhes underneath him, mouth fallen open and eyes clenched shut, until finally the Bull takes pity on him and withdraws his hand, wiping it on the cloth he’d used to clean his mouth. He releases Dorian’s hands, but Dorian doesn’t move them for a moment, chest heaving. It’s enough time for the Bull to reach back into the jar and coat his dick, and shake momentarily with the relief of finally touching himself.

“Hey,” he says, and Dorian opens his eyes again. “C’mere.” Dorian reaches for him, and the Bull offers his dry hand to pull him up. Dorian settles himself in the Bull’s lap, leaning forward like he might fall over otherwise.

“Well?” he says. “Shall we get on with it?”

The Bull laughs again, short and breathy. “Someone’s eager. Turn around then, brace yourself on my horns if you need to.” He pauses for a moment, and then adds, “You’re probably gonna need to.”

“Promises, promises.” But Dorian does as he’s told, carefully dragging himself around and then leaning back against the Bull’s chest. His hands come up to hold onto the Bull’s horns as suggested, and then he pulls himself up in a clear hint of his own.

Can’t pass up an invitation like that. The Bull takes himself in hand, presses his dick where his fingers had gone, and Dorian hisses above him. “Take it slow,” the Bull says, and the noise Dorian makes is just as much frustration as need. An inch in, and he was right about this being a tight fit even after all the work loosening Dorian up. “This hurt?”

“I will hurt _you_ ,” Dorian snarls, “if you don’t get on with it soon.”

“That’s not an answer,” the Bull snorts, but he shoves in with a bit more force for another shameless moan. Steadily he pushes on, to Dorian’s gasps and cries, until Dorian’s thighs come to rest against his.

Dorian’s not wrong -- the Bull’s probably not gonna last long like this either. With both hands he strokes down Dorian’s chest while he rolls his hips, slowly but with growing intensity as his pleasure mounts. Meanwhile Dorian strains against him and shakes, pulsing around him as before and whimpering at each thrust up, tipping his head back against the Bull’s shoulder.

“You’re gorgeous like this,” the Bull murmurs into his ear, and Dorian makes a sound closer to a sob than a moan. This isn’t gonna take much longer. The Bull holds him steady with one hand, rocks his hips as best he can from underneath, and wraps his still-slick right hand around Dorian’s dick, gives it a couple slow pumps and getting a full-body shudder out of Dorian.

It’s barely any time at all, even with Dorian’s desperate resistance, before he seizes up and comes with one last broken shout. He totally relaxes then, and the Bull grabs him by the thighs and leans them forward for a few more thrusts, too far gone to count, before his own orgasm hits him like one of his practice shields.

They stay like that for a moment before the Bull slowly pulls out and wipes himself down. He’s not sure he trusts himself to stand, but Dorian will want a clean rag of his own, and they’re all by the basin. With a groan, he heaves himself off the bed to grab one and dampen it. Dorian still hasn’t moved, so the Bull returns to him and wipes down his legs before he stirs.

“I can clean myself up, you know,” Dorian says, but doesn’t make any move to take the job over. For all his claims of self-reliance, what the Bull’s figuring out is that Dorian wants to be taken care of, as well as needs it. He just can’t bring himself to ask for it or accept it when offered -- outside of bed, at least.

Both rags go on the heap of clothes that’ll get washed in the morning. The Bull stretches out on the bed again to face Dorian, rests an experimental hand on Dorian’s hip. Dorian allows this without reciprocating, but he’s relaxed, eyes half-lidded again and smiling just slightly. “I think we’ll have to do this again,” he muses, and his smile widens just a hair.

“You could stay,” the Bull offers. “Nowhere to go in the morning -- I think we could fit a second round in.”

Dorian sighs, and his smile fades again. “No, I should leave in a moment. It wouldn’t do to get too comfortable here.”

It’s an offhand comment but still triggers that clench in the Bull’s chest, something like worry and something like disappointment. Dorian _should_ feel comfortable here, and maybe the Bull’s doing something wrong -- but just as likely it’s the taint of Tevinter carrying over, that comfort is somehow a danger. He wants to tell Dorian it doesn’t have to be that way here, at least in the Bull’s bed. Instead he drops his hand back to the mattress.

“Well, hey, my door’s still unlocked if you change your mind,” he says, and then he can’t help himself, and leans in for one last kiss. Dorian’s watching him when he pulls away, brow creased in a way that suggests troubled thought, but he did kiss back.

“See you in the morning, Bull,” he says, and sits up to gather his clothes. He looks back once, from the door, but then shakes his head and closes it behind him.

 

 


	4. left in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bull sees something he shouldn't have, in a place he never should have come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to the delightful [Bri](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AislinCade%22), I also had assistance from the lovely [Adri](http://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile). Thank you both so kindly.

The Fade. Of course it’s the Fade. First it’s fighting through a horde of demons, then it’s falling to sure death from a crumbling tower because _someone_ got it in her head to save Stroud, and now here they are in the _fucking_ Fade, demon central, and the Bull’s supposed to be their muscle.

At least he doesn’t have to be the one who has it together this time. Dorian’s in fine spirits, rambling to the Adaar about that academic shit that the Bull can never follow. And Hawke seems right at home too, although if what she’s saying is true, this isn’t her first time through. Varric’s taking it well, but hardly happy about it; his shoulders are set with tension, and his mouth in a tight line. Stroud looks to be just as displeased as the Bull. It’s nice to know he’s not the only one.

He’s not sure what he thinks about this Divine Justinia demon or… whatever else she could be. A ghost? A memory? Some other trick the Fade is playing on them? The Adaar seems willing to trust her, and it’s not like any of them have anything better to suggest. And if this Nightmare demon is legit, and it ends up being her, they can always kill her.

A small comfort: Dorian doesn’t look to be suffering. He’s talking now about his Harrowing, which is clearly a different animal than down here in the south. It’s no surprise it was a desire demon that tempted him -- not for the obvious reason, but because Dorian’s still not that great at admitting or asking for what he wants. Probably part of why he went for the Bull in the first place. The Bull hasn’t really made a point of keeping his observations to himself.

They’ve been wandering through these glowing green rocks, too close to lyrium for his taste, for a while now. The Adaar walks in front, staff at the ready, and Hawke behind her keeps raising a hand to touch her own staff. As usual, Varric’s got Bianca out, but usually it’s to fondle her, lewdly. Not really the place for that.

The sudden echoing voice around them is pretty unexpected, though.

“I see I have a visitor,” it says, and it’s a demon for sure, an exact match for the whispers he hears when he’s bleeding out or on the edges of sleep. Qunari don’t dream, he knows that, none of that Fade bullshit, but there’s those fragmented scenes that play out when he can’t shut out his subconscious. Nothing but his own head pulling tricks on him. The fears that come then, they talk in a voice like this one.

“Some foolish girl come to seek memories better left forgotten. Do you think they will help you? Do you think they will make you stronger? Can you draw from them as I do?”

There’s always tension in the Adaar’s shoulders, and it doesn’t change at all. If the Bull could see her face it’d probably be the same face she wears whenever she has to be the Inquisitor, or the Herald. Unflappable, that Adaar.

“You would be better off never knowing the truth. But how could I deny a guest the gift they seek?”

“The gift,” the Adaar snorts. “Funny thing to call stolen property, don’t you think, Varric?”

“In this case, I gotta agree, Hatchet.” Varric pats Bianca again anyway.

There’s enough of a pause that the voice could be done talking, but the Bull’s not really surprised when it goes on. If there were anything that had to be a dramatic monologuer, some ancient demon’s gotta be the top of the list. “So flippant when you think you are alone, Inquisitor. So secure in your position. Is it the pride or the power, I wonder, that keeps you here?”

It has to intend to cut deep, but the Adaar continues not to give it the satisfaction of a reaction. “Whichever one means I saw a job to be done and did it.”

The voice just laughs, and then a mass of roiling shadows with grasping hands drip down from some rock or another. The voice, the Nightmare or whatever else it is, goes silent during the clash of battle. Too much to hope it’s gone for good but at least they can keep moving forward around these stalagmites -- not a ceiling in sight to drip them into existence -- and the ankle-high water in ongoing puddles. Doesn’t seem right that the Fade would have something as mundane as puddles without some kind of water demon attacking their legs.

The respite doesn’t last long. “Or perhaps, I should be afraid, facing the most powerful members of the Inquisition,” says the voice, dragging down the Bull’s spine like claws against stone. It pauses for dramatic effect, but with none of endearing affectation that both Dorian and Varric have been known to use. Just enough silence to drive home the threat.

“Greetings, Dorian,” it continues. Dorian, still at the Adaar’s side, doesn’t manage her stony indifference, and his shoulders do go up. “It _is_ Dorian, isn’t it? For a moment--” and there it drags out another pause for the dread to set in-- “I mistook you for your father.”

The shoulders fall. The Bull can’t see his face but he’d swear that Dorian looks relieved. “Rather uncalled for,” Dorian says. His voice tries too hard to sound casual. Maybe not relieved then, maybe just resigned. But still, if that’s the best this Nightmare can come up with, maybe they’ve got less to fear than they thought. Dorian’s dedicated to being everything his father doesn’t want, but there’s deeper crap lurking in his head.

There’s more demons to fight then, and the Bull takes his own tension out on them. They’re more solid, here in the Fade, but maybe that’s just because this is where they come from. But they’re also more dangerous. Solid claws cut deeper and all that, and it’s not just fire or lightning that armor can deflect but scratches and blood as well. The Fade might be where people who dream do that shit, but it’s all real when the Adaar’s opened up a pit for them to fall into.

He doesn’t wish he’d died hitting the ground, but he’d take gravely wounded for sure.

The Nightmare goes for Varric next, and that jab about Hawke has to be a sore spot. If Varric fires off his arrows with more violence than usual at the next round of those dripping hands, no one mentions it. They’re disgusting, anyway, and they curl around the Bull’s latest greatsword like they’re trying climb up to wrap around _him_. When he slices them away they leave an oily residue and he has to ignore the way his skin crawls.

“Maybe I’ll ride his body myself,” the Nightmare says, which makes the Bull’s skin crawl all the more, and maybe that’s why he can’t brush it off like the others tried, growling under his breath at the reverberating return of the demon’s laughter.

He tries to ignore the taunts directed at Hawke, then Stroud. He tries to dispatch the shadows before they can touch him, and the more familiar demons before they can dispatch any of the mages or Varric. One of the rage demons scorches a long weal from chest to throat, Dorian’s barrier just a split second too late, but the mundane burning pain both comforts and spurs the Bull on. They battle their way down into a cove that overlooks some kind of ocean, and after an age of fighting -- too long and too short at the same time -- the last demon falls, and everything goes silent.

No one, not even Varric, says anything while they pick their way across the sand and rocks. The Adaar and Hawke wander under the stone bluff that closes around the cove, while Varric stands near the uneven steps up to the other side of the path above. Something pulls Dorian toward the sea and a suspiciously perfect spiral of standing water in the sand, and the Bull trails after him at the unease that pricks the back of his skull.

There’s a graveyard beyond the spiral, or at least a collection of headstones, ringed with a spiked, uneven fence. In profile, Dorian looks stricken, and then looks away as the Bull approaches. It’s a worse reaction than his brief moment of tension at the Nightmare’s words, and that has the Bull stepping forward to look before he has time to reconsider.

Some of the headstones are blank, but past the first line there are names carved into the stone. The Bull spots Sera’s first, and lets his eye slide past without looking too carefully, but then his own name catches his attention. The single word written there says everything about the significance of the graveyard, and he’s already looking away when another name stops him.

 _Dorian Pavus_ , it says, and the Bull looks in spite of himself. Nothing there about his father, just another single word.

_Temptation._

The Bull tears his eyes away to find Dorian watching him, angrier than he’s looked in a long time. And -- there’s fear there, beneath the surface, and the Bull wishes he’d looked the other way and never noticed that headstone.

“Dorian,” he says, but Dorian raises a hand to stop him.

“Don’t say a _fucking_ word.” Dorian’s voice is cold enough to cut, and he’s shaking, but it’s a wild departure from the way he shakes in the Bull’s bed. “Don’t ask me about it, don’t talk to me about it, just forget you ever learned this about me.”

He pushes the Bull out of his way, who allows himself to be turned around, but Dorian is only a few paces away when the Bull speaks up again.

“Madness,” he says.

Dorian stops in his tracks. “Repeat that.”

There’s no use in moving closer, not without chasing Dorian off, so the Bull consigns himself to telling anyone else who’s listening. “Mine says, ‘madness.’”

Dorian holds still a moment longer, but doesn’t respond, which more than anything says how pissed off he is. And then he stalks off to where Varric stands, by the steps up, and the Bull gets left with the graveyard he won’t look back toward.

After some more exploration, the Adaar calls everyone back to attention, and leads them back up to the stone path. The Bull lets Dorian go first, and follows behind Hawke and Stroud who likewise still aren’t speaking. A fine company they all make. Maybe this was the Nightmare’s plan all along, turn them against each other the better to pick them off one by one.

Not on the Bull’s watch, though. He’ll brave the heat of Dorian’s wrath rather than respect Dorian’s wishes and leave him alone to face danger. He’ll take all the forgiveness Dorian won’t give him, as long as it keeps Dorian alive.

Back on the bluffs there’s no time to think, as wave upon wave of demons hit them hard. Both Hawke and Dorian fling spells more violently than usual, spraying the Bull, Stroud, and the Adaar with unnecessary viscera. The Bull catches Varric wincing from behind Bianca. He’s out of the splash zone, but there’s no avoiding looking at it.

The Bull hacks his way through a pride demon, staining the greatsword and his own skin a purple that looks like bruising, and finally the battle clears. They all stand around and breathe for a moment, all of them spaced apart, no one speaking. Even the Adaar only jerks her head after a moment for the rest of them to follow her further in. Hawke and Varric follow behind, leaning against each other rather than talking, and Stroud follows behind, spine straight and head raised. This leaves the Bull and Dorian to bring up the rear, so the Bull keeps as quiet as the rest and his eyes straight ahead.

They hang back as the impersonation of the Divine returns to speak to the party again. The Bull pays what attention he can, but it’s more about the Adaar’s recovered memories, another warning about the Nightmare that none of them need by now, something about Leliana that the Bull tunes out, wary now of overstepping the bounds of privacy.

And the party moves on. They must be getting close; there’s an oppressive silence hanging around them, muffling the noise of their own movement. The air around them feels viscous, harder to push through. It has the Bull watching, turning his head to get full range of vision, and that’s why he catches Dorian watching him, wary.

They regard each other for a moment, another, and the fury that twisted Dorian’s face earlier doesn’t come back. There’s distance between them that has nothing to do with physical space, but Dorian doesn’t glare or turn his face away. Just watches.

“You’re not, by the way,” he says, eventually. There’s still no warmth in his voice, but it’s gentled. The dim glow of the Fade around them washes him out and shadows him at the same time, and like he once said, offhand to Cassandra, his profile does look carved out of marble. Carefully constructed, tangible but out of reach. If the Bull stretched out his hand he might just touch cold stone, not tender flesh.

He doesn’t. Right now he’s probably lost the right. “I’m not what?”

Another pause, and then Dorian stops walking and turns to face him. “You’re not mad. Not in the way you think.” Something comes over his face then, like a crack in the stone -- Dorian’s reaching out, of all things. Only a few weeks ago he would’ve turned away.

“I’m sorry,” says the Bull. “I shouldn’t have looked. Shoulda known better than that.”

The crack widens, letting the fear through, and there’s something behind that, too. Something tentative. Dorian says, “You shouldn’t have. But I was cruel,” and his mouth twists in a botched-up smile. “Needlessly so.” Further ahead, the Adaar calls, so they begin walking again.

“If I didn’t look--” the Bull holds off a moment, collecting his thoughts. “If I didn’t see your headstone -- would you have told me?”

Dorian hesitates, and there’s that fear in his eyes. But then he relaxes his shoulders. “I think, given time… yes. I would have.”

It’s suddenly painfully clear, that feeling that lurked behind the fear: trust. The greatest temptation of all. Yet Dorian braves it, reaches through it, and a wave of something powerful crashes over the Bull, staggers him. The urge to reach across and touch gets louder, nearly unbearable, but he can’t help looking back at Dorian’s face to see that trust just barely showing itself.

“I am mad,” the Bull says, softly, “but not the way you’re thinking, either.”

A sharp laugh; Dorian shakes his head. “Mad enough to deal with me, at least.”

“Dorian,” he says, and it’s something that could have been a joke once. He lifts his hand. He lets it fall. “Do I tempt you?”

Dorian smiles, thin and humorless. “More than you could possibly imagine.”


	5. left behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning that never was, or how Dorian first bloodied his hands.

After a year of red, red light and poisonous green sky, crystals piercing him from his very bones, the visions come easy. The Bull’s seen every fallen soldier he’s ever led staring him dead in the eye, silent and damning.They all see him. They all know him. It’d be easier if they shouted or accused, spat out his name, anything at all. They never do.

So maybe that’s why he’s willing to hear out the ghost of Adaar, and that ‘Vint mage who died with her. Something new. No harm telling them what everyone already knows. No harm stepping out of his cell, even if it’s just an illusion. And if it isn’t… his Chargers stormed the castle to come for him, and the Venatori tossed their broken bodies in the cell across from the Bull’s to grow more red lyrium. He’s got a debt to repay.

He’ll take his chances, if it’ll give him an opportunity to settle it. And if he dies trying, hell, that’s still better than waiting for the red shit to kill him from the inside out.

The ‘Vint keeps looking at him. Not Sera, not Leliana -- at Adaar as well, but she’s leading them. That makes sense. The ‘Vint -- Dorian, that was his name -- has no reason to keep glancing the Bull’s way, but that doesn’t seem to stop him at all. Time was the Bull would’ve had an one-liner ready to scandalise him. After a year of agony and isolation, it’s hard to see the point of his old games.

So: “Want something?” he growls.

For a moment the ‘Vint looks downright sheepish, but he covers with a slow smile. “It’s just, I’m not used to seeing Qunari who aren’t rushing me with a blade.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen,” says the Bull, but it’s mostly an empty threat. As long as they’re on the same side, there’s no point being picky about the details. Dorian’s pretty handy with a staff anyway. It probably wouldn’t be an easy fight.

On Dorian’s part, he nods with the faintest ironic trace of a bow. “So long as you wait until after I’ve reopened that vortex, rush away.”

“Nah.” The Bull isn’t really in a smiling mood, but he tips his horns like a shrug. “You have Adaar’s back, I’ll have yours.”

Dorian looks at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised in elegant suspicion. Eventually his face clears, and he smiles. It’s not a bad look on him. “In this situation I am loathe to call the enemy of my enemy anything less my friend.”

“Pretty forward of you,” the Bull says, but without hostility. Adaar’s a pretty good judge of people, and if she sees the ‘Vint as an ally, the Bull’s willing to do the same.

“Well.” Dorian’s smile twists to irony. “Reticence has never been my greatest flaw.”

They keep climbing, landing after ruined landing. Adaar shoots the Bull a progression of worried looks, but she’s got enough on her plate leading them through the remains of Redcliffe Castle and also soothing Sera, who has yet to calm down. Leliana has no concern for anything beyond retribution and bitterness. It works out -- with a job to do, the Bull can just focus on getting it done. He doesn’t have to keep an eye on the ‘Vint, either, because while Dorian seems pretty excitable he still hasn’t lost his cool.

There's a scuffle after a while. A cluster of Venatori that they walk right into, or Adaar leads them into for something to kill. Something the Bull's noticed during this past hour: for a mage, she doesn't spend much time on fancy magic. She's got a solid staff and she uses it as much as a weapon as the magic it channels. Might be a Vashoth thing, but it's respectable anyway. Dorian hangs back and picks off the archers, probably to avoid friendly fire, but when they're down he's got fine enough precision with his fire. Intimidation's gotta be it, then. Sera's the same way, backed up the stairs out of the thick of combat.

It doesn't take long, not with the five of them. Adaar finishes the last skirmisher off with a sharp blow to the base of the skull, and he's dead before he hits the ground. Efficiency over violence -- the Bull knew he liked her for a reason. That can't be a Vashoth thing, though. The Tal-Vashoth back in Seheron were wild and reveled in destruction, and the mercenaries down in the South were just like the Bull in their enthusiasm for a good fight. But Adaar's precise and calculating, and probably this comes of being a commander in her old life.

Similarly, Dorian's not much like the 'Vints that the Bull met before. Not a single blood magic incident, and he's civil half the time, the sharp retorts he tosses the rest of the time toothless. And here he goes around now, shutting the eyes of his countrymen almost gently.

"They were our enemies," Adaar says, a rebuke, and Leliana's glaring daggers at the man. But Dorian keeps at his task, skipping the bodies whose faces burnt off, and closing the eyes of the final skirmisher with a sigh.

"They were." Dorian stands back up, leans on his staff. "But probably not by any choice of their own."

The Bull grunts; he's not gonna start the debate about Tevinter's slaves, but it's a reminder that a 'Vint is still a 'Vint, even a weird one like Dorian. Sera doesn't have his restraint, though. "Magisters bringing all their slavies over to fight instead-a them? Yeah, that's a real fair fight."

A pause, because Dorian's jaw works like he's biting down on something he'd normally want to say. "Now you understand my pity. It's difficult to hate someone who never got a choice."

"Not always," Sera mutters, dark and tight, but she doesn't explain. They walk on.

It gets worse of course. A little further on they walk out into a covered dock occupied by two mages, not Tevinter by the look of them. But the Bull only catches a glimpse because the woman makes abominations of them both and summons a bunch of shades for good measure. Demons, always _fucking_ demons. Interesting that here, Dorian doesn’t hold back, charging in with all of Adaar’s abandon, even though he’s way less sturdy than their Herald. By the time they’ve cleared the room, Dorian’s got a nasty burn on one arm and a slow-bleeding cut on the other. Adaar is glaring at him, though she’s gotta be aware of the irony there.

So it’s not balking from a fight that kept Dorian back in the last round of combat. The explanation must be in the mournful way he’d attended to the dead, but that couldn’t be the whole of it. Pity for the conscripted dead, but Dorian’s probably not used to killing his own people. He’ll have to learn how if he’s planning to survive the hunt for the magister who started this whole thing.

There are too many flights of stairs after the abominations. It’s preferable to even more abominations, but the anticipation has the Bull on edge. He doesn’t put his axe down at all, even when Adaar shoulders her staff. To the ‘Vint’s credit, he’s got his staff at the ready as well, but he’s probably just jumpy. All this must be new to him, fresh from his mansion guarded by fancy wards and full of slaves. The new mages back at Seheron were like that, too.

The remaining four stand guard while Adaar shuffles through abandoned papers, journals, containers. Leliana won’t acknowledge anyone else, not even the Bull or Sera who have been through similar ordeals themselves. That’s understandable, though. Sera just stares at Adaar like a lifeline. And Dorian carefully avoids looking the Bull’s way after being caught the once, which would actually be kind of cute if the Bull had any kind of patience for that type of thing here.

Around this point, he starts noticing the fatigue setting in. There’s no pain, but a heaviness in his bones and a fuzz in his head, remembered from Seheron after too many nights without sleep. This time it’s the red that lines his flesh and crystallised under his organs sapping his strength. The Bull knows how to deal with this, but it’s not really the best thing for surviving a castle full of demons and mages. Death’s a risk he’s prepared to take, but not if does nothing for the end goal. If what Dorian said is true, then this future should never come to pass in the first place. Honestly, ending himself here is preferable to leaving things as they are.

A couple more rooms for the Herald to search, and then the next door opens up to a wide hall -- the hall before the receiving room, the Bull remembers. Sure enough there’s a barrier up over the right end of the hall, and as if that weren’t enough, a full company of ‘Vints and a fade rift just convulsing open.

More demons. The Bull finds balance with his axe and runs into the spawning demons while Adaar summons a small storm of lighting to stun them. It hits some of the ‘Vints, too, and they all start shouting. It’s kind of funny. They don’t get on with the demons either -- the Bull leaves one wisp alive because it keeps poisoning an enemy mage. Adaar’s shouting something but the Bull can’t catch the words, the fog in his brain thickening with each moment of respite. The pain wakes him up, so he takes a spot in the middle of the action just to keep focused.

Something slams _through_ him then, not stunning the Bull but knocking down his surrounding foes. There’s Adaar, grabbing his arm. “Fall back, Bull,” she says, stern and collected. “Higher ground only works if someone can hold it.”

She’s right, which is the only reason the Bull only growls and follows her back to the stairs, arrows and a burst of flame covering his retreat. It doesn’t take long before the demons reach them, and the ‘Vints not far behind, and then it’s the comfortable rhythm of hit and take, swing and stagger.  The problem’s that there’s only one wall behind them, and three directions for attack. The Bull has all his attention on the demon in front of him, such a beginner’s mistake, and he doesn’t catch the woman pop out of the shadows behind him until it’s too late to block her knife.

But the knife never cuts, because Dorian gets in the way. No magic, just the blade of his staff slamming into her throat with a solid meaty thunk. An arrow whistles nearby, felling the Bull’s demon assailant, and so they get a chance to meet eyes for a split second. Dorian’s face, stricken and blood-streaked, looks a little too familiar.

“Don’t toss it until we’ve finished them off,” the Bull tells him, and the moment passes when he has to turn back around to a fresh attacker.

He keeps it at bay until the battle’s won, but that moment of distraction stays with him. The Iron Bull would never have made that mistake, if for no other reason than his Chargers never would’ve let him hear the end of it. Now they’re dead before they could see him fuck up like that. But Dorian saw, just like the Bull saw the horror in _his_ face. It’s a cheap move to pass up his own self-disgust to turn the criticism to someone else, but there’s no time for elegant solutions.

“Never a killed a man without a spell, have you?” He doesn’t make it funny or easy to shrug off. No time for Dorian not to learn this lesson.

Dorian bristles just like the Bull expected he would. “I’ve killed before!”

“It’s different when you feel it,” the Bull clarifies, even though he knows Dorian knows that already and has done since the blade bit. “The sound and the resistance, and the blood, you don’t get that when you’re casting spells.”

And he knows he hit the mark because Dorian shudders and contracts his throat like he’s keeping something down. Takes a bit for him to get it to stay, too, but Adaar’s fumbling through the pockets of the enemies they brought down, so there’s some time for it. “Fine,” Dorian says, finally. “You caught me. I never killed anyone before leaving Tevinter, and I never killed anyone without magic until just now. Can you get your disgust with me over with quickly so I can postpone my inevitable mental breakdown?”

The lesson’s set in, so there’s no reason to keep talking, but they still don’t have a way to get through the barrier, so there’s no reason to stop, either. This ‘Vint is a weird animal, a good distraction from the consequences of all this activity and all their dismal chances.

“No harm done,” he says, with a shrug to make it casual. “Everyone’s gotta get through the first one. Bet you’re not too keen on killing other ‘Vints, at that.”

Dorian purses his lips, just like before when he didn’t say what he was thinking to Sera. “I don’t acknowledge anyone who would do this to the world as any kin of my mine,” he snaps, but that’s the problem isn’t it? _They probably didn’t have any choice_. There’s a heart in him, probably too much for his own safety. Probably made him a piss-poor ‘Vint at that. He saw that too, in Seheron and in his own men. The Qun doesn’t discourage compassion, but there’s no place for it in war. It made a soldier a Tal-Vashoth just as often as resentment did.

Then again, the difference between Dorian and the ‘Vints the Bull met up north is probably why Dorian’s here now, with this crazy plan to turn back time to save everything, throwing his lot in with the Inquisition whether he succeeds or fails. But still. As a soldier under the Bull’s command back in Seheron, the Bull would’ve had to take him in for less.

“Doesn’t mean it can’t get to you all the same,” is all he says, and then Adaar waves them over and that’s the end of that.

The scavenger hunt Adaar leads them on could’ve been fun once, but now it’s just tense. The Bull bashes down walls when asked, takes down the big threats while Dorian and both archers pick off the fighters around him. When Adaar keeps looking for the shards Dorian said would make a key, the Bull looks at Dorian again. He’s gotten past the nausea -- compartmentalised, if what he said about holding off a breakdown wasn’t exaggeration. That’s something effective in a war, at least. He could be up to the job of putting shit back together, with Adaar at his back. No worse than the Bull anyway, with the ever-growing fatigue pulling him down and sapping his strength. It’s embarrassing, but more than that, it’s dangerous. The dim, dirty hallways aren’t spinning yet, but they don’t focus at first whenever he closes and opens his eye again.

Finding the last shard ends up being pretty anticlimactic. Just lying there on a desk for anyone to take. There’s still a magister to face, of course, but after all they’ve fought through, this feels too easy.

In the end he doesn’t question it, but only because they’re facing that magister.

Alexius, Dorian calls him. He speaks with Adaar and Dorian speaks to him, angry words, but there’s pain in them, too. As the Bull suspected -- Dorian’s still dragging his old allegiances around with him. Leliana gives his friend a merciful death, but Dorian winces all the same. If it hits him harder than that, he’s at least doing a damn good job of hiding it.

The battle’s desperate and dirty, everything to lose versus nothing worth winning. The Bull cleaves one demon to face another, Adaar closing the breaches as quick as she can. Alexius teleports too fast for the Bull to keep up, but when the demons are cleared out every so often he tries anyway.

It’s Dorian who fights hardest, fury on his face, slamming his staff into Alexius when he can reach, and throwing fire until sweat drips off his face when he can’t. His control from before didn’t follow through, so he’s in the middle of the action while Adaar and her archers attack at range, and the Bull keeps running and tries to avoid being set on fire.

Eventually all the teleporting gets to Alexius, taking him shorter distances and unbalancing him when he reaches his destination. Dorian closes on him with a barrage of fire and then just his staff blade, wearing down Alexius’ barrier. The others hold back, but the Bull remembers the earlier fights and runs to catch up anyway. The horror on Dorian’s face at the blood on his blade. The way he’d shut all those eyes of the men and women who’d tried to kill him.

Alexius’ barrier drops, and the arm that brings his staff up to block buckles and drops. Dorian swings back his staff -- and falters. There’s no time to look at his face, because Alexius is already scrambling back, so the Bull takes the last few steps he needs for a windup, and buries the axe into the head of the magister.

The only sound left is Dorian’s heavy breathing.

“You’ll have to learn how to kill that way,” the Bull says eventually. His tone doesn’t carry any rebuke or irritation as far as he can tell, but Dorian flinches anyway. He’s looking away from the Bull, from the body, from everything. The Bull sags in place, the energy and focus of battle falling away and leaving him worn out. The end of his rope, probably. Either he dies here, or Adaar and Dorian succeed and he won’t ever have existed like this in the first place. Maybe both.

“For what it’s worth,” he adds, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

Dorian doesn’t turn back to look at him, but he makes a small sound of acknowledgement. For all his inexperience, he faced the fight up the castle head on, and he’s still going, even after facing these demons, even after a man who clearly once meant something to him died at his feet, at someone else’s hands. Even though he must know that it should have been his own.

Maybe it’d be good for him to hear it. But there’s no way he wants or needs to hear it from the Bull. So the Bull backs off, and Dorian stays next to the body for a while longer before sighing and leaving it behind him, ready to finish the job. 


	6. what we're left with

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's no reason left to stay, and that's why Dorian's leaving.

Dorian comes to him in the afternoon, and the sunlight shows his face too well, enough for the Bull to see the lines and the tension there. He looks like he hasn’t slept at all lately. The hand gripping his collar clenches too hard, his knuckles gone white sometime before he arrived. Some weight hangs over him, and the Bull’s standing before he even noticed getting to his feet.

Sometimes when Dorian’s in a funk he doesn’t want to be crowded too closely and they’ll sit around in silence until he feels safer. Not today; he crumples into the Bull’s arms as soon as they come up to hold him, and stutters his breath into the Bull’s chest. He says nothing, so the Bull holds his tongue for now. Whatever’s up, there’s no way of knowing whether words will help or just make it worse. The Bull just tightens his arms and strokes Dorian’s back, not so light that he squirms, not so heavy that it hurts.

This part was never strange. He’s held people before, friends and strangers, people he’s fucked and people that became family. The Bull doesn’t mind being a bulwark, and it’s a good feeling to be able to give that to someone else. Something to counter his other usual service of violence. And he’s been that to Dorian, before Dorian ever realised it, before they ever even touched. So that’s normal enough.

The urge to protect isn’t new either. Anyone who needs it, the Bull wants to offer it, and plenty of people who don’t need it as well. He’s a weapon after all, mostly his own these days but still sometimes wielded by someone else. He can take a blow that not everyone can, regardless of what form it comes in. It doesn’t matter if he’s catching a sword meant for Sera, running interference for the Adaar. Losing an eye for Krem. Taking a letter out of Dorian’s shaking hand.

He’s always willing. But with Dorian, he _wants_ it.

Dorian’s hair clings soft to the stubble under the Bull’s chin, and it smells freshly washed. Dorian’s hands cling to the Bull’s harness and pull a little too hard. He doesn’t make a sound except for his efforts to breathe steadily, but he presses in a little closer with every few hitched exhales. And he needs support, could use comforting, but… the Bull wants to be the one to give it. He wants Dorian to turn to him first, because it’s second nature, because that’s what Dorian needs. He wants an end to separate rooms and flimsy excuses; he wants every damn person in Skyhold to know about them and for Dorian not to mind it at all.

“Hey,” he says then, because it’s not an intrusion exactly. Acknowledgement, maybe. Just so Dorian knows that he’s still there.

When Dorian looks up, his eyes are clear and his face is dry. It’s something, at least. Gotta be a weird angle for his head, but he doesn’t make any kind of move toward stepping away. “Hey,” says Dorian.

He drops his head back down to the Bull’s chest, which could be the end of conversation -- but after a moment Dorian speaks again, lowly. “This is silly.” His voice gets muffled by speaking against skin, but the Bull can feel the resonance of Dorian’s words in his chest, deeper than usual. “Nothing even happened, it’s simply a weakness -- I thought -- I just--”

“Hey,” says the Bull again, and Dorian gasps against him. He brings a hand up to cup the back of Dorian’s head and cover his neck, just another steadying weight. “Nothing wrong with being overwhelmed.”

“I thought I’d be ready,” Dorian says, wretched. He looks up again, opens his mouth, and then falters for words. His eyes go wide and pleading, so the Bull leans down and angles Dorian back enough to kiss him, softly but firm. The noise Dorian makes into his mouth doesn’t sound anything like desire. That’s okay.

They somehow move to the wall, the easier to hoist Dorian up enough for body contact as well as aligned mouths, one of Bull’s hands free to soothe him, arm to throat to jaw and around the head, wandering more than could be considered calm. He presses Dorian back with their kiss. Somewhere along the way they discovered that Dorian didn’t just get off on being pinned, that it made him feel safe with someone he could trust. With the Bull. It’s the kind of thing that scares him, Dorian’s absolute trust in him, because no one else seems to make that group. Maybe the Adaar. And when the hell had temptation given way to uncomplicated need? How did the Bull miss it happening?

He doesn’t feel unworthy of that trust. But the Ben-Hassrath had trusted him, and Gatt had trusted him, and he let them both down. There’s no way of knowing he won’t let Dorian down the same way, and even if Dorian survived -- that vulnerability he’d given to the Bull would destroy him.

The Bull leans in closer, as much for his sake as Dorian’s.

They spend a long time like that. Not even kissing the whole time, because sometimes Dorian just leans back against the wall and breathes, pinches the bridge of his nose against some headache, brings his hands up to the base of the Bull’s neck or curls them back against the Bull’s chest. Sometimes he falls forward to rest his head on the Bull’s shoulder. When the Bull strokes his face, Dorian raises his head to meet the Bull’s lips.

And when it becomes clear that Dorian isn’t in a state to move, the Bull scoops him again to drop them both on the bed, adjusting himself to keep holding Dorian without poking a hole in the mattress. Slowly, Dorian calms -- or rather, he falls asleep, as the Bull notices when he starts softly snoring. Good. He needs it.

He sleeps for two solid hours, during which time the Bull carefully pulls away and off the bed -- leaving seems like a bad idea, but he’s got pay for the Chargers to figure out, jobs to review before he tells the Adaar which task would suit his men the best, an axe to sharpen, leather to polish. All things he can do here.

He’s leaning against the headboard writing out sums for the Chargers to review when Dorian stirs awake, and he sets down the paper for later. A rustle of sheets: Dorian sits up, rubbing his face where the kohl around his eyes already smeared. “How long?” he asks in a voice rough with sleep. There’s creases on the right side of his face where it pressed against the pillow.

Absurdly, the first response that comes to the Bull is _as long as you need_. But that’s the answer to a different question, one that Dorian never gets the nerve to ask, and the Bull never manages to answer anyway. And after Dorian’s recent breakdown, it’s probably not the best time for a revelation like that.

He shrugs instead. “Couple hours. You looked like you needed it.”

Dorian winces, and maybe he hadn’t registered the same exhaustion the Bull noticed. “I,” says Dorian, and then he sighs. “That was… I apologise. For that display.”

“Dorian.” The Bull raises a hand, brings it to rest against Dorian’s neck. The pulse there quickens, and there’s something like a punch in the gut that shakes him from within. Whenever Dorian opens too much, he closes up tighter again -- one step forward, two steps back. “You don’t need to.”

“There are quite a few things I need to apologise for,” says Dorian, who looks down at his lap. “And this isn’t fair to you, when I--”

The Bull waits. A beat, a second, pass while Dorian flounders for words. But this isn’t the time to interrupt him with encouragement, or to let him retract it with a never mind or it’s nothing. Not when whatever Dorian has to say had so completely overwhelmed him earlier. Not now as Dorian remains open just a little longer.

“I spoke with Adaar,” Dorian says at long last. He looks miserable again. “I -- when I joined the Inquisition, it was to see it through. And here in the south I realised just how rotten Tevinter truly is. I swore I would do everything within my power to change it.”

He doesn’t look back up as the next punch gets the Bull in the diaphragm, shoving all his breath out in one instant. Oh, the Bull knew about Dorian’s plans for the future, but he hadn’t thought about the future. It hadn’t really been the time. They’re whatever they are, indefinitely, until they aren’t. Except -- he’d been relying on that indefinite time. “You’re going back,” he says, and his voice comes out even. Flat.

“I can’t continue running away from everything.” Dorian’s voice is anything but. There’s hurt there, in the rise of pitch and the way his words waver, and he keeps his eyes trained down, but leans against the Bull’s hand as if supporting his own head just got to be too much. The muscles underneath that hand have gone so tense since Dorian woke up.

The Bull thinks, maybe he wants to be talked out of it. But this hasn’t been about giving Dorian what he wants for a long time, now. Could be it never was. Dorian’s grown and changed as much as the rest of them, and he’s a far cry from that mess of bitterness and sharp edges he’d been at the start. Could be that’s enough.

Maybe the Bull gave him what he needed already.

He nods slowly, even though Dorian won’t see. “Whatever’s right for you,” he says, slowly and as flat as before. Like he’s prepared for this by now. “But no one’s gonna think less of you if you’d rather stay.”

Dorian’s hands clench and relax, and then Dorian looks up again, and his face is full of resignation. “I would.”

And there it is. In all his time here, Dorian has grown, taken responsibility for himself, ceased to fear commitment, and all these things that made him a better person are what will take him away again. And the Bull is proud, so damn proud of him. But he’s not perfect either, and he wishes Dorian weren’t so ready to take on this duty, weren’t so willing to stop running away from everything. Or that he wouldn’t leave behind the things -- the people -- who loved him and took care of him.

The Bull wishes Dorian weren’t so ready to leave _him_.

There’s a room around them, and a world outside the window, but neither the sunny courtyard nor the rough stone walls exist anymore, so intent on Dorian’s grey eyes and the crow’s feet that have begun to line them is the Bull. “Dorian,” he says, and, “Kadan. Is this what you want?”

A long exhale, and Dorian turns his head into the Bull’s hand supporting him. His breath comes warm on the Bull’s wrist. “It’s not about what I want. It’s about what a whole nation needs. My nation. My homeland.”

Somewhere along the line, the feeling came back into the Bull’s voice, and it’s gentle now. Serious. “Your home?”

But Dorian doesn’t answer.

When they fuck that night, it’s rough and needy. No restraints but hands and limbs. Between orgasms they keep touching, and Dorian scratches lines down the Bull’s breast and his back, and the Bull sucks blooming bruises into Dorian’s shoulders, his stomach, the insides of his thighs. He envelopes Dorian’s head with his hands, and they kiss, break apart so the Bull can stare at him and the face he’s going to lose. If tears are shed, they’re lost in Dorian’s hair or the sheets the Bull presses him against.

When they sleep that night, the Bull lies half on his side and half sprawled across Dorian, and each time he wakes he tightens his grip again. He thinks Dorian wakes as well, because each time he finds wetness on his chest but Dorian’s head cradled against the Bull’s arm.

In the morning Dorian is gone. It’s been a long time since Dorian’s left like that, even when he needed to be elsewhere early. He’d wake the Bull first. But in the filtered sunlight the Bull sees only the creases of the sheets, cold now, leaving only the scent of sex and Dorian behind, and a ring, plucked from Dorian’s thumb. Aurum, carved intricately, by Dagna from the looks of it. It won’t fit the Bull’s fingers, so when he’s dressed he pockets it instead. The weight of it, light as it is, bumps against his leg when he walks downstairs.

He can’t quite put it out of his mind as he trains with the Chargers, but he can focus at least. There’s a center of calm he has to find, without emotion to guide his hand but discipline instead. With inevitability comes resignation, and with resignation comes that flatness from yesterday, and at least he can channel that. It’d be nice, to sweat out the sadness, but at least the change of focus helps. Human sweat and dust clean the scent memory from the night before, and each jolt of shield on shield keeps him in the moment.

The Bull works too long, and works his Chargers too hard, but they allow it. They know him by now. Don’t need the full story to know when he needs something to work himself out of. Besides, they’re all the same way about soreness afterward, where it’s a good hurt, not a bad.

Krem claps him on the arm while they’re cleaning up after themselves. “This something you can talk about?”

Thing is, the Bull’s not sure. He can’t talk about Dorian breaking down in his arms, or the ring in his pocket. Can’t exactly bring up the way he wanted with strong certainty for Dorian to stay, or how unsettling it was. Can’t be sure if Dorian’s making his plans common knowledge yet, or if he’s planning to slip away with as little fanfare as he had this morning.

“Gotta find out more first,” he says, and Krem’s a damn good friend because he just nods, hand coming down on the Bull’s arm again.

The Bull stays in the courtyard when the Chargers filter away, and leans against the fence around the training yard. For a while he just looks around, taking in details. Harding, in from the field, chatting with another couple scouts in the shade of the tavern wall. Grass pushing up from the ground as the spring turns late. An argument from the market square drifting up, words lost but tone clear. The background hum of a fortress full of people going about their lives just like yesterday, nothing crushing to mark the end of an era.

Eventually he lets his eye lift to the library window Dorian claimed, and Dorian is standing at it, looking out. Maybe he’s lost in thought and seeing nothing at all. But the Bull pushes off from the fence to climb the stairs up to the keep. His boots clunk against the stone, the metal of his brace a bit brighter than the rest. He takes the stairs up to the library slow and isn’t sure why, and opens the door at the top quietly. Dorian’s still at the window, a book in hand and a stack at his feet. The oud rests against Dorian’s chair -- the Bull realises with a sudden tightness in the throat that he never actually heard Dorian play.

He lets his feet fall loudly on the floor to announce himself, and Dorian starts and turns to face him with the book between them. “Oh,” he says, “Bull. I was just sorting my belongings from the library’s. Somehow I’ve managed to accumulate a fair few since joining the Inquisition. I suppose I’ll have to pass the better part of them on before I leave.”

 _I can keep them for you_ , the Bull almost says, but that’d be a lie. His room’s small enough as it is, and there’s no guarantee he’ll be with the Inquisition forever anyway. Less keeping him here if Dorian’s going back home. Although Dorian never answered that question from yesterday afternoon. Could be he’s leaving home instead.

Somehow that makes it worse.

“Traveling light, then?” the Bull says, and he’s getting tired of biting his tongue. This isn’t his style. But neither is this kind of unreasonable wanting. He could shove down these bookshelves and tear apart that damned chair if he went with what he wants. But like Dorian said -- it’s not about what he wants.

Dorian looks down at the book in his hands, and then deliberately sets it down on the pile. “I’d rather spend as little time in transit as I can manage.” He smiles, rueful and not happy at all. The lines at his mouth deepen with it, and he looks older than his age then. A hint at the Dorian the Bull’s not gonna be there to see.

He can’t keep up this conversation. “Can I,” he starts, but Dorian’s already reaching up for him, so he doesn’t bother to finish the question. They press hard but kiss gentle, Dorian running his tongue against the Bull’s lips like he knows the Bull needs it. Keeping his hands at the Bull’s jaw while the Bull grabs too hard at his back.

“I’ll miss this,” Dorian murmurs against the Bull’s mouth. “I’ll miss you as well, I suppose.”

“So will I.” The Bull manages a rueful smile of his own. “I _suppose_.”

They kiss again. It’s still not like Dorian to make public displays without getting nervous, but maybe it doesn’t matter when he’s leaving so soon. Maybe he’s just got his priorities figured out. At some point the Bull shut his eye, and when he opens it again Dorian’s watching with eyebrows pressed up. It’s almost too much to take. But the Bull’s got his priorities, too.

“I should finish this,” Dorian says, pulling away after a while. “Or I simply won’t.”

“I can help,” the Bull replies, too fast, but Dorian doesn’t seem to notice. “You taking it back to your room?”

“For now.” Dorian looks down at the stack of books and chews on the inside of his cheek. “If you must insist on helping, you may as well start relocating my personal library there.” He glances up to the Bull’s face again, goes to open his mouth -- but then he shakes his head and doesn’t say anything else.

The silence stretches on too long, and now it’s awkward all of a sudden. The Bull clears his throat. “I’ll get started then.” But he doesn’t move for a moment, because as much as the moment has gone uncomfortable, it’s still a moment together. After that, he turns away to hoist the pile of books, and doesn’t look back to see if Dorian returns to his sorting.

Dorian’s room is messy but not with the usual clutter. He’s got clothes on the bed for sorting, a box for cosmetics on the worn-out wooden chair, and his desk’s covered in papers that don’t seem to have any order. The Bull tries not to look too closely at what’s written there. The floor’s mostly covered in saddlebags, what floor there actually is, so he pushes some aside with his bad foot to put down the stack of books. The top book, the one Dorian was holding, is marked only in Qunlat. _Language Way_ in direct translation, but that’s missing too much context. If Dorian reads it alone, he won’t really understand.

Back in the library, Dorian has another stack of books, but he’s sitting down now, bent over his clasped hands. He seems out of reach, so the Bull comes closer to touch him. Dorian leans back into the Bull’s hand on his neck, and sighs.

“Done already?” the Bull asks, but Dorian just shakes his head. He looks as exhausted as he did yesterday, as he probably is gonna look for a long time to come. Will anyone take care of him up there? Will anyone notice the bags under his eyes or the way his hair falls out of the usual strong hold he keeps it in?

“You can always start again later,” the Bull says, when Dorian doesn’t say anything out loud. “Tonight, or tomorrow.”

“I can’t lose momentum,” Dorian says, his voice hollow now. “One of our merchants has a ship heading north to Nevarra. If I ride hard tomorrow evening, I can catch up with him and travel north in relative comfort, and little notoriety.”

So soon. The Bull can’t stop himself this time. “Does it have to be now?”

Dorian lifts a hand to cover his eyes, and laughs without humour. “I’m a weak man, Bull. I need to go before I can’t.”

Then stay, the Bull thinks, but he says it by kneeling in front of Dorian, pulling down the hand from Dorian’s face and taking both in his own hands. Dorian swallows but doesn’t pull away. He’s not a weak man at all, is the thing. Physically, he trains way harder than a mage needs to, and mentally he lives with his own demons but manages to hear out having them questioned. He does what he needs to. He drags his freezing feet all across the Emprise and all of his complaining doesn’t keep him from fighting as hard as any of them.

“There’s still tomorrow morning,” he says eventually. “You got most of your stuff out already, looks like.”

“I could leave the rest.” Dorian sighs then, closes his eyes. “It’s not as if I have room to bring all of them, anyway. I’ll have -- access to libraries, at least, in Qarinus. I may as well perform the public service of leaving the Tevene volumes here in the uncivilised south, that the Inquisition may learn the true depths of our depravity.”

He looks down to the oud then, resting next to him. “I suppose I won’t be able to bring that either.”

“You never played,” the Bull says, not exactly what he meant to say, but better than some of the other things he could’ve. “Not where I could hear, anyway.”

Dorian blinks, once, twice. “I wasn’t aware you had any interest.”

“I’m always interested in you.”

A sharp breath in. Dorian’s eyes widen for a moment, before he gets his face back under control. Maybe that was too much, but it’s the truth. The Bull doesn’t want to make him feel guilty on the top of all the rest, but he’s not gonna suddenly withhold his... whatever the fuck this is.

“Perhaps,” says Dorian, slowly, “I could give one last performance before I set it down. You did assist, after all.”

One pile of books isn’t much assistance, but the Bull’s not gonna object to a free show. He releases Dorian’s hands to pick up the second stack before Dorian can get there first, and grins at the artful eyeroll he gets for his troubles. But it fades quickly, and Dorian’s face goes still just as soon. They’re not good at this.

Dorian follows him down the hall, oud in hand, and waits for the Bull to duck his head through the door frame. He closes the door behind them. “Apologies for the disaster,” says Dorian as the Bull sets down these books next to the first stack. “I’ve been attempting to condense my worldly possessions. They say, after all, you can’t take it with you.”

“Think that one’s about death,” the Bull offers. “Not moving back to Tevinter.”

“The two might not be much different in the end.” Dorian says this lightly, as a joke, but the knot in the Bull’s throat tightens again. It’s too close to the truth. He’ll be alone and stirring up all kinds of trouble. Even any respect his work with the Inquisition could have inspired won’t save him from everything that’ll get thrown his way.

The Bull swallows against it. “Might wanna avoid jinxing it.”

A pause, and Dorian turns serious again. “Yes. Well. True enough.”

Dorian sets the oud down to move the clothes off his bed, resting them over the saddlebag pile, then takes it up again, gesturing for the Bull to take the chair. He strokes the fingers of his left hand against the strings, winces, and goes to tune it. All this time, the Bull had never looked at it this close, and he takes in the elegant carvings in the wood and the intricate metal lacework above the hole in the center. Each note rings darker than the oud as the Bull heard it played in Seheron, but the sound’s similar enough. The same tuning of the strings. Dorian eases them into alignment and then strums a few dissonant chords, frowning.

“I should have changed the strings,” Dorian says, but quiet, to himself. He looks -- nervous, and it’s still weird to see, however many times the Bull’s seen it. Dorian looks up and catches the Bull’s eye, shoots him a small smile. And then he begins to play.

The notes ring out dark, spaced out and precise. The Bull would’ve marked Dorian for a showboat, but the tune flows subtle instead, subtle and moody. He can see it -- Dorian out on the balcony of one of those fancy Tevinter mansions some warm night, playing against the low hum of a sleeping city and the rustling of palms that line the front of the building. It’s not exactly a sad song. It hurts just the same.

Dorian looks down the whole time, tracking the movements of his fingers. They vary in speed, sometimes almost too fast to track, but just suddenly still or slowing. Every phrase rings out deliberately with Dorian’s precise movements of both hands, the right darting up and down the oud’s short neck, the tendons of the left rising and falling with every note plucked. It’s completely at odds with his fighting technique. It’s beautiful, and incredibly hot.

Eventually Dorian looks up again, and his hands still on the strings. “It’s not a perfect replication, but it’ll do,” he murmurs, and the Bull leans forward then to take the oud out of Dorian’s lap and rest it carefully against the emptied dresser.

Dorian empty-handed, the Bull takes his thighs with hands that cover both from one side to the other. Leans forward. “Sounded pretty damn good to me.”

“You may be biased,” Dorian replies, but he’s smiling when he says it. His hands reach for the Bull’s chest, just to rest there, and affection swells in the Bull underneath them. He thinks suddenly about the concept of love outside the Qun. Nothing he ever understood, but could be that’s the best description of the feeling he’s got. Dorian’s a friend and the Bull’s fucking him, so that’s one departure from the Qun way of things already. And the Bull’s Tal-Vashoth now anyway. Maybe that changes things.

And then Dorian’s about to leave, which makes this a pretty terrible moment to consider it.

The Bull presses his thumbs on the inside of Dorian’s thighs instead with the force of a straightforward massage versus any kind of teasing. Dorian huffs a laugh. “I would think you would need that more than I,” he says, hands coming up to the Bull’s shoulders, grasping firmly. “You’re the one with the bad knee.”

It’s not about need. Nothing lately has been about need. “That’s not going away any time soon.”

Dorian’s face falls, the smile fading as fast as it began. “Don’t just let it get worse.” His voice comes out hoarse, none of the irritation that could’ve been intended showing through. His hands fall from the Bull’s shoulders to rest either side of him on the bed. “You’ll just end up with a cane and your merry band of misfits won’t let you out in the field anymore.”

“Can’t have that,” the Bull says. He kneels down on both knees anyway; the bum one’s stiff but not hurting too bad, and there’s still the rug on Dorian’s floor. Pushes the chair aside. Leans against Dorian’s shins until they part to let him at the mattress. The Bull digs his thumbs into the edges of Dorian’s hamstrings, and Dorian breathes sharply in. “Let me do something for you right now.”

“There’s no reason,” Dorian begins, but then exhales slowly. “If you insist, I suppose.”

He makes noises, pain and relief that can be identified by the tightness in the voice and the speed of the breath. When the Bull begins to work on the tops of Dorian’s legs with fingers and palm, Dorian leans forward against the Bull’s forehead. The muscles of Dorian’s thighs relax over time, and when they’re free of most of their tension the Bull rubs them knee to crease, crease to knee. Dorian doesn’t pull his head away.

“Don’t let your legs get worse, either.” Faces so close together, the Bull doesn’t have to talk much louder than a whisper. “Just because they’re fine now doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way forever.”

The Bull’s pretty damn sure he’s not actually talking about bad knees at this point, but if Dorian catches on he doesn’t mention it. Just leans the rest of the way in and brings up his hands to tilt the Bull’s face up, to kiss him again. “I’ll take that under consideration,” Dorian says, and gives himself back to the Bull’s mouth. This time when the Bull pushes his hands up Dorian’s thighs, it’s his usual intent, and Dorian shivers just like the Bull knew he would.

“If it’s your last night,” the Bull says, “Let me make it a good one.”

“Vishante kaffas!” snaps Dorian, too loud. He pulls back and looks away. “It’s always about me, isn’t it?” he goes on, voice lower. “It’s our last night. It should be about you, too. What you want.”

Thing is, Dorian doesn’t know what he’s asking. I want you to stay, the Bull keeps to himself. If the Bull asked for everything he wanted, there wouldn’t be much that Dorian could give him. He draws circles at Dorian’s hips, instead, figures out what won’t be too much. “I want to make you feel good,” he says. “I’d like to see you fall apart for me. One more time.”

“You don’t fool me.” Dorian’s smiling, a small and sad one. “You’ll be up and manhandling me as soon as the sun comes up.”

“Gotta get it in while I can,” says the Bull, and Dorian groans at the pun and shoves at the Bull’s chest. Undeterred, the Bull ducks beneath Dorian’s chin to press a kiss to the leather over Dorian’s sternum. “Let me get you out of this.”

Dorian flutters his hand in encouragement, _go on, then_ , so the Bull starts working on all those buckles. Sometimes Dorian gets impatient with the slow process and joins in, but not now, while the afternoon fades into evening. He lets the Bull perform the task alone, shoulders rolled back and breathing steady, a far cry away from the urgency last night. When all the buckles get taken care of he lifts his arms for the Bull to pull the shirt and single sleeve free, and then again for the shirt that comes after.

Arms and torso uncovered, the Bull takes his time loosening the fastenings on the leather clinging to Dorian’s legs. It won’t come free easily, anyway, but he takes more time than usual with each buckle and link, taking in the feel of them and the tension of pulling each connection apart. He pulls off each boot and then lifts Dorian’s hips to get rid of those pants, which get tossed somewhere in the direction of the rest of Dorian’s wardrobe.

Come here, Dorian opens his mouth to say with his lips making that first consonant, so the Bull cuts him off: “Let me do this.” Dorian’s eyes go barely wide again, but he nods and brings his hands up to loosely hold the Bull’s horns. He closes his eyes as the Bull drags teeth and lips slowly down over taut muscles, below the ribs and down the stomach. Against the iliac crest, taking a quick break to bite above the bone and pull blood just beneath the surface of the skin. Dorian gasps, voice dragged out under it, probably unintentionally, and it’s the Bull’s turn to take a sharp breath in.

“Bull,” says Dorian, and the Bull kisses him just above the crease where hip becomes leg. “Bull,” Dorian repeats with his voice breaking, and then, “Amatus,” choked out. The Bull can’t help the moan he presses against Dorian’s thigh, where he’d run his hands before, but it’s not arousal that yanks it out of his lungs. There isn’t even the satisfaction at Dorian’s own arousal, just the urge to cover all Dorian’s skin with his own and the restraint it takes to keep himself in check. He kisses down Dorian’s thigh and back up again to follow the trail his hands made. He breathes out into the the curled black hair that trails down from Dorian’s navel and listens to Dorian breathe in after.

The hands at his horns tighten when the Bull barely even brushes Dorian’s dick with his lips, and he laughs, before he gets dragged back into desperation. Dorian doesn’t try to silence the noises he makes as the Bull drags his mouth down the length of it, low and then one high moan when the Bull takes it in with one smooth movement forward.

He’s got a handle on how to pull the loudest sounds out of Dorian’s throat, and he knows when to draw lines with his tongue and when to pull the air from his mouth. He knows how to sense when Dorian gets some control back, and how to break it by opening his mouth to push Dorian’s dick far back enough to swallow around. The Bull’s got the pattern down to drag it out, bring Dorian barely to the edge and then down again, until the moans start coming out like sobs. Then he sucks and strokes the underside with his tongue until Dorian’s yanking at his horns and spilling down his throat.

There’s only a second to wipe his mouth before Dorian drags his face up and kisses him hard on the lips. His face heated up sometime while the Bull wasn’t checking, but that’s nothing new. The damp skin under his eyes says a bit more, and the Bull rises from his knees to reach it with his mouth. He moves up to the creases at the side of one eye, the right one that the Bull lost, parts his lips to taste for salt and then to lick it away. “Hey,” he says, and Dorian’s eye flutters open again.

“Can I?” Dorian asks with a shaky voice, but the Bull rises all the way up to pull them all the way onto the mattress.

“Still time for that,” he says, arranging Dorian against himself to leave room for the horns. Dorian’s face gets pressed between his neck and shoulder, and Dorian’s breath barely registers against his skin. He wonders how he got in so deep. He wonders why he never tried to pull back before he was too far gone. He wonders if separation will bring him to his senses.

The Bull’s got this heavy suspicion that it won’t.

True to his word, he fucks Dorian after a while, rolling his hips as slowly as he can deal with. He grips Dorian’s hips hard enough to bruise but also releases them to gently stroke down Dorian’s back or his chest. He presses his lips against Dorian’s spine and speaks against it low and resonant, words he can’t actually hear himself. The rest between acts gave Dorian time to regain some stamina, and the Bull brings him off again before hitting his own breaking point and shuddering still. The sweat’s already cooling on his arms and chest as he pulls free, and Dorian glistens slightly in the dimming natural light as he collapses to the mattress.

They don’t leave the room, except for Dorian in a bathrobe sticking his head out the door until he can flag someone down and ask if they could do him the favour of passing a request down to the kitchens. Dorian tosses the robe aside before coming back to bed.

One of the serving girls brings the meal up with a knowing smile, except that she doesn’t know, and the Bull would laugh except it’s not funny at all. They eat, they stare at the empty plates, and Dorian puts the robe back on (“It’s _cold_ ,” he protests, when the Bull raises his good eyebrow) and starts sorting through clothes. They fill a few saddlebags until Dorian’s hands fall empty beside him, and then the Bull guides him back to bed.

Lying down again they hold too hard, and it’s hard to tell who’s comforting who -- or maybe it’s both of them, together. Eventually Dorian finds the presence of mind to get them under the bedclothes, and the Bull falls asleep at some point because when he opens his eyes the moon has swung around to shine right into his face. Dorian’s profile looks like the marble he suggested to Cassandra. The Bull has to touch it to make sure it isn’t. Dorian’s eyes flutter open, and the Bull pulls his fingers back too late.

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Dorian turns to him, the same deep bags under his eyes. “Haven’t been able to stay asleep lately. I’ve no idea why, I’m sure.”

The joke falls flat, like most of them have lately. The Bull brings his hand back to Dorian’s face and keeps it there while Dorian yawns way wider than a human should be able to open their mouth. He keeps his eyes closed for a couple seconds after, and opens them half-lidded then.

“This would be so much easier if you just--” Dorian cuts himself off, sighing. A rustle in the sheets is his hand, clenching and relaxing again.

The Bull take the restless hand in his, the left one, the blind side. “If I…?”

A huffed laugh, and Dorian’s knotted brow loosens just a bit. “If you were someone else, probably.”

“Can’t help with that,” the Bull says.

They doze on and off, and sometimes hands roam and other times they just tighten. Sometime in the early morning the Bull wakes to Dorian snoring, and smiles faintly before drifting off again. Next time he opens his eyes again the sun’s already way further to zenith than the Bull usually lets himself sleep, but extenuating circumstances mean he can make an exception. Dorian’s still asleep, and since he definitely needs it, the Bull keeps his hands to himself.

He goes after breakfast himself, and when he gets back Dorian hasn’t moved, curled in on himself and facing the wall. Torn between letting him sleep as he needs, or waking him up to extend their time together just a few more hours, the Bull sits back on the bed with the tray on his lap. The bread’s fresh. Meat’s getting more varied as small game starts coming out into the sun again, and this smells like pheasant. It tastes damn good, but sticks in the Bull’s throat when he swallows.

In the end he doesn’t have to make a choice; Dorian stirs behind him and snakes one arm around the Bull’s waist. “I smell something I can eat.” His syllables slur together, apparently not awake enough to manage enunciation yet. Grabbing at the Bull’s arms, Dorian pulls himself up enough to drape over the Bull’s back.

That fondness again doesn’t make it any easier to get the Bull’s current mouthful down, but he manages anyway. “Gonna have to sit up first.”

“You could just feed me,” Dorian mutters, but uses the Bull’s weight again to haul his legs around and take a sitting position there, thigh against even bigger thigh. Could be it’s a joke, but the Bull rips off a piece of bread, soaks it in the meat juices, and brings it up to Dorian’s lips anyway. Dorian snorts but bites it out of the Bull’s fingers, just barely brushing them with his lips.

They go another round afterward like Dorian threatened, and then Dorian puts his foot down about the both of them bathing. “We both know it’ll be a long time before you bother to do so again,” he says, and then his breath catches. He pushes on through it. “Indulge me this morning, won’t you?”

The Bull will. He’d indulge Dorian in far more than that if asked -- or even if not asked, if Dorian doesn’t get around to speaking up. He even collects the basin himself, and the water  besides, though Dorian does the heating as usual. Dorian scrubs at the Bull’s back with a coarse towel, with grumbled excuses about the Bull always rushing it on his own. He lets the Bull wash his hair, though; one more excuse to run fingers through it again.

The afternoon isn’t theirs alone. At some point they’re all gathered at the Herald’s Rest with late lunch, the Adaar with her arm around Sera, Cole resting his arms on the frame of a backwards chair. The Chargers in the vicinity drag their own chairs over. At some point Harding and Dagna show up, and Cullen hangs back a little from the crowd with his own Fereldan ale, laughing along with another raunchy Red Jenny tale. Dorian once said he could count his friends on one hand, but judging by the crowd here, he’s using all ten fingers at least twice. And he’s smiling at all of them like he really means it. The Bull’s arm around his waist tightens, before the Bull makes himself relax.

“A collection,” Cole says on his other side, soft enough that the conversation above probably drowns it out everywhere else. “Companionship, content, cared for. It was never supposed to become.”

The Bull lets his breath out, decisive. “Become what?” he asks, just as quiet.

Cole looks up at him with his wide and deep-set eyes, the way he always looks, because either he’s this serious about everything or he hasn’t figured out which expressions go with which contexts. “Home.”

There’s nothing for it, the Bull has to look back at Dorian, just the moment Dorian turns his gaze toward the Bull. It only lasts a moment before Dalish says something funny and Dorian looks away with a smile, but in that moment Dorian’s whole face is open, the hurt plain to see. They’re both miserable. There’s nothing either of them can do.

“Gave him all I can.” Cole’s voice barely registers in the Bull’s ear. “Can’t give anything for this. Helping, helpless, hurting.” The Bull turns back to him when Cole puts a bony hand on the Bull’s arm. “The Iron Bull, even you can’t do everything. Hiding, holding, hoping, the heart far-flung and fighting…”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” says the Bull.

“It doesn’t have power over him if he doesn’t acknowledge it,” Cole replies with the solemnity of the young. “Only it does. It will hurt you less if you don’t know, only it won’t.”

“Got in one, kid.” The Bull sighs, and displaces Cole’s hand to clap him on the shoulder before he looks back up to the conversation.

The afternoon goes by too fast, and too soon the Adaar’s leaning across Sera to lay her hand on Dorian’s. She says nothing, only gestures toward the pink-orange gradient in the sky above Skyhold’s walls. Sera makes a sound that can’t be anything other than a whine, and from across the table Krem’s looking at the Bull with too strong a sympathy in his eyebrows and the way he presses his lips together. He’s learned plenty over the years from the Bull, how to take everything in, when to mind his own business and when to reach. Best damn second in command a man could have. When they all rise to their feet, the Bull just a step behind Dorian, Krem makes his way around and presses his hand to the Bull’s arm.

“We got you, Chief,” he says. “Do what you have to.”

Out in the courtyard, the stone walls block out the last of the light, but the torches aren’t lit yet. The Adaar walks off to the stables before Dorian gets a chance to, and so he starts saying his goodbyes. The Bull hangs back, since he’ll be at the end of the procession. He watches Dorian shake hands with Cullen, bow low and earnestly to Josephine, exchange some words with Cole before ruffling his hair. Dagna takes his arm in both hands and congratulates him on his contributions to her studies of thaumaturgy loud enough for everyone else to hear. Sera stares at his outreached hand and then launches herself at Dorian so he has to catch her for the hug, but he hugs back just as hard.

He makes his way through the Chargers: handshake and shoulder clap for Rocky, a kiss on Dalish’s knuckles while she swats at him, brief words with Stitches, a nod for Grim. Skinner, he just stays still for her to punch him, and she doesn’t even send him off with a black eye. He salutes Krem, and they talk a while longer before clasping each other’s shoulder and smiling. Time was they barely exchanged nods.

The Adaar returns with a saddled horse, saddlebags full of the possessions Dorian and the Bull had chosen to make the journey, and the Bull drifts closer, not enough to eavesdrop but near enough to be noticed. After a few words, the Adaar crouches down enough to bring their faces even, and the Bull can hear her words this time. “You will always be a part of this Inquisition, Dorian Pavus. Wherever you go, whatever missions you take up. Remember this.”

There’s no one else to wait for. The Adaar repeats Krem’s action from before, clasping the Bull’s arm as she passes him, without a word. They understand each other. The Bull’s steps drag when she walks away, and he can’t look at Dorian’s face until he’s all the way there.

They stare at each other, possibly for the last time in their lives, and the ache in the Bull’s chest turns to a gaping void, and Dorian’s eyes are already leaking. “Bull,” he says, and then he chokes and begins crying for real. The Bull doesn’t bother holding back, and holds Dorian instead while Dorian gasps against his chest. “It’s all right,” he says, even though it’s not. “Kadan. It’s okay.”

“I didn’t know how hard this would be,” Dorian whispers. “I thought -- I thought--” And then his words run out, end in a devastating strangled noise.

The Bull doesn't do platitudes, but he can't say the truth, that he knows it will always be this hard for him. It's the only lie he's ever told Dorian, and the only one he ever will. "It'll get easier."

Dorian pulls back enough to look him in the eye, kohl unsalvageable, and his skin has gone blotchy and red, like his eyes. “You know,” he says, “I don’t think it will.”

A pause, and then the Bull leans down to kiss him, soft as he can at first before he gives up to the need for more. Dorian’s hands hold almost too tight at the Bull’s neck, and the Bull pulls him forward with a hand against his back, another tangled in his hair. “Don’t forget me,” Dorian says against the Bull’s mouth.

It’s unnecessary. The Bull couldn’t fucking do it if he tried.

They linger too long, until someone clears their throat, and Dorian pushes off the Bull’s chest with arms that strain too hard. “Like I said,” he says, voice ragged and low, “if I don’t go now, I don’t think I’ll be able to at all.”

“Take care of yourself,” the Bull tells him, trying to sound steady. “Don’t go dying on me just yet.”

Tears come back to Dorian’s eyes, and Dorian huffs a laugh. “Only if you will too.”

The Adaar approaches again, with the horse gripped by the bridle. “You should leave now, if you’re going to make it to the meeting place before Smitheson’s asleep.” Her voice is gentle as it gets, but it’s still too harsh. “Finish your goodbyes before it gets harder. You’ll have to see where you’re going.”

Dorian covers his face and laughs again, roughly. He brings his hands down and grabs the Bull’s harness to pull him down one more time, presses one more kiss against his mouth, and then turns to the horse and swings into the saddle. “Inquisitor, it’s been my honour to serve. Bull… goodbye.” He presses his hand to the tooth pendant beneath his robes and smiles, and the Bull mirrors the gesture, and then Dorian wrenches away and clicks to the horse, and then he’s riding out the gate, and then he’s gone.

“I’m surprised you let him go,” the Adaar says. “It’s clear you wanted him to stay.”

“It’s not about what I want.” The Bull’s voice is steady, flat; he’s numb, his feet heavy on the ground, his skin just a little bit cold. Yeah, he’s wanting, he wants Dorian to turn around, he wants the rotted core of the Tevinter Imperium to burn and the rest of the nation with it.

But the Adaar turns to him. “You’re still stuck thinking like the Qun demands. You do everything you have to, and don’t let yourself want anything. You’re both too blighted similar that way. Did you even ask him to stay?”

The Bull inhales, exhales, inhales again. He thought of it all these three days, and he’d bitten down on it every time, because like Dorian said, it’s irrelevant anyway. “What difference would it have made?”

The Adaar grabs him by both arms, turns him to face her, all of a sudden seething. “You’re a fucking idiot. Of course it makes a difference. Do you know how much he agonised about this decision? I was in that library for days, listening to his ranting. No reason to stay, he said, and when I yelled at him he fucking shrugged at me.” She stamps her foot. It could have been childish, but not with the fierce look on her face. It helps that she’s as tall as the Bull, and can glare at him eyes to eye without having to look up. “I swear to this ridiculous concept of a Maker, you idiots deserve each other.”

It sinks in all of a sudden, that he should have asked, that Dorian couldn’t have known how much the Bull wanted him to stay. Maybe he was waiting all this time for an excuse not to leave, and the Bull in his own stubbornness had refused to provide it.

The Bull pulls back from the Adaar’s grip. He doesn’t say anything but the Adaar nods at him anyway, stepping away so the Bull can bolt across the bridge to the road across it. He’s running as hard as he’s ever run, so hard that even with his massive lungs his chest starts hurting, his mouth going dry. He can’t see the rocks at one side of the road or the trees on the other, and the even the road blurs ahead. It’s a qunari thing, the strength to run this fast, but he’s racing against four legs with two. The shorter the sprint, the easier it is to catch up, but Dorian has a head start, and there’s no way to know how fast he’s riding.

But the Bull reaches the crest of a hill and there Dorian is, barely at a trot. One last sprint away. The Bull throws every last ounce of stamina he has into it, drawing on his battle strength and the pain in his chest and over his ribs to accelerate, and he can’t see a damn thing, and then he’s abruptly there and gasping, leaning on the horse while Dorian stares at him like seeing him for the first time.

“I never,” the Bull starts, and then he has to stop and cough, nearly doubled over, like he’s gonna sprain his back or rip his diaphragm in half. It takes a long time to get any of his breath back. In between gulping air back into his empty lungs, he presses on. “I never asked you to stay.”

Dorian drops the reins. Drops the reins and nearly falls out of the saddle.

“I want you to stay,” the Bull says. “I didn’t even tell you. But I want you to stay.”

“Bull,” and Dorian’s voice breaks. “Bull. You ran all the way just to--”

“Will you stay?” asks the Bull before Dorian can finish his sentence. “Forget Tevinter. It never did a fucking thing for you. Let someone else lead that revolution it needs. Come home.”

Dorian chokes again, throat working. He looks a wreck but more beautiful than he’s ever been, completely come apart, and there’s barely enough light left to see by but the Bull can see him clearly anyway. A sudden wind pushes his hair back, but he doesn’t close his eyes or turn out of the way. “If you say that again, I won’t be able to go. Bull, I can’t--”

“Come home,” the Bull says, almost an order, almost a plea. “Please.”

Now Dorian tumbles from the saddle, and now the Bull catches him with both hands, and Dorian just says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” The knot in the Bull’s throat constricts so hard he can’t breathe.

“I’ll stay,” Dorian says. “ _Fenhedis_ , Bull, I’ll stay.”

It’s completely dark when they get back to Skyhold with the horse behind them, holding hands like they’ve fused and can’t pull apart, and the gate is open for them, and everyone is still there waiting, like they all knew the whole time there was only one way this could end. The Adaar’s holding the gate herself. She brings her other fist to her heart when they get close, and grins so wide.

“Welcome home, Dorian,” she says, and then Dorian is laughing, bright and happy, head thrown back with careless abandon, and it’s like the whole damn world opens up with him, and the Bull smiles helplessly. Dalish whoops, and the rest of their friends take up her lead and suddenly everyone’s shouting at once.

“Delighted to be back,” Dorian replies, but he’s already turning back to the Bull. They kiss again in front of everyone, the entire Inquisition. And finally Dorian’s stopped walking away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Holy shit check out this [amazing illustration](http://vaixu.tumblr.com/post/128725553851/i-just-finished-this-wonderful-fanfic-called-no) by tumblr user vaixu! I'm absolutely floored, both by how gorgeous it is and also that someone illustrated my fic, _again_ , I am truly hashtag blessed.
> 
>  ~~AND THEN:[even more incredible fanart](http://%20sometrashland.tumblr.com/post/142085947143/willyou-stay-for-no-reasons-left-to-stay) from tumblr user sometrashland!!! I am over every moon ever!!~~ apparently that link doesn't exist anymore. we can all mourn together the loss of a treasure....
> 
> If you're curious, [“Makam Bayat”](https://youtu.be/W3ZL_6AbX2g) by Munir Bachir was what I was listening to while writing Dorian playing the oud. I highly recommend checking it out, the context for the story aside. Here is a [website about the oud](http://www.oud.eclipse.co.uk/) if you're not a nerd about stringed instruments like I am, and would like to learn more.
> 
> Now: acknowledgements. First, thank you all so goddamn much. Your comments and kudos and excitement have spurred me through my exhaustion and frustration, and I absolutely treasure you all for it. I'm honored by your support.
> 
> Second, eternal thanks to Bri and Toft, who helped with beta-ing and fleshing out ideas when I was stuck -- Bri more with the beta-ing, and Toft also specifically for living nine hours ahead of me and thus being able to stay with me until the wee hours of my mornings. Couldn't have done it without either of you.
> 
> Third: thanks to the Iron Bull Thirst Squad on twitter who have enabled, supported, and cheered me on; you are all the best friends a humble writer could ask for, and I love everyone in this pile of animals.
> 
> And finally, thanks and furious blame to Blythe, who unknowingly started this monster with a simple prompt. You monster.
> 
> Edited to add: thanks additionally to my amazing roommate, Breeze, for tolerating my constant agonising and hair-pulling even on weeknights when she got home late from work and just wanted to relax.
> 
> The title comes from the song ["What Happens When the Heart Just Stops"](https://youtu.be/jAUq0p1B6Ic) by the Frames, and I survived writing this by pausing to play it frequently, on piano.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [but the body goes on living](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6655075) by [homsantoft (tofsla)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft)




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